A Mounting Problem

[MDJAK]

Get your minds out of the gutter.

I need Mac experts here.

I've got four external hard drives connected to my MacBook Pro.

One firelite connected through firewire 400. Mounts every time on the desktop.

One Western Digital 500 gb "My Book" connected via USB which mounts most times.

One Maxtor I 200 gb which mounts most times.

One Maxtor II 200 gb which never mounts.
These two are connected through a USB hub which is all lit and I know is working.

I leave these on all the time, but turn the computer off every night.

If I turn the Maxtor II (That's the roman numeral model number) off and on, then it will mount.

I always get a message when I boot up that there's a disk that I should eject, ignore or initialize. When I click initialize, a dialogue box comes up, but it doesn't show there, only the mounted ones do.

Any suggestions?

mark

PS: The two Maxtors are formatted for MS-DOS, as is the My Book. The firelite is formatted for Mac.

I erased the Maxtor II, but could find no where on the disk utility menu to reformat it.

[DavidEB]

did you try applications -> utilities -> disk utility -> partition ?

[T.D.]

Get your minds out of the gutter.

I need Mac experts here.

I've got four external hard drives connected to my MacBook Pro.

One firelite connected through firewire 400. Mounts every time on the desktop.

One Western Digital 500 gb "My Book" connected via USB which mounts most times.

One Maxtor I 200 gb which mounts most times.

One Maxtor II 200 gb which never mounts.
These two are connected through a USB hub which is all lit and I know is working.

I leave these on all the time, but turn the computer off every night.

If I turn the Maxtor II (That's the roman numeral model number) off and on, then it will mount.

I always get a message when I boot up that there's a disk that I should eject, ignore or initialize. When I click initialize, a dialogue box comes up, but it doesn't show there, only the mounted ones do.

Any suggestions?

mark

PS: The two Maxtors are formatted for MS-DOS, as is the My Book. The firelite is formatted for Mac.

I erased the Maxtor II, but could find no where on the disk utility menu to reformat it.

Doc, I'm very disappointed that you didn't turn to your mentor, PekToral for all your Mountie issues. He's our resident expert here.

Didn't you see him threaten to send them to the Pacific Northwest the other day to "reclaim" the land?

[belmondo]

I haven't been running external drives on my Mac Pro, but I do remember that in the 'old days', external discs didn't always load when booting the computer. I just got into the habit of leaving them off till the computer was booted, then turning the discs on.

I doubt this is relevant now because that was back in the day of PowerPCs, SCSI, and OS 9.X.

[MDJAK]

The only reason I don't turn them off each night is, supposedly, and this may no longer be relevant, the on/off switch is the one, main weak spot of any electronic gadget. In the recent seminar I took, the teacher recommended leaving them on all the time. When not in use, they do spin down.

As to the recommendation about partitioning, I'm not sure what that would do for me if I don't want to split the drive with a partition. Are you saying the format command is there?

Also, what does enabling "journaling" mean, does anyone know?

Turner, I've PM'd enough with petey to know he wouldn't know the difference between a mountie and a new joisey trooper.:lol:

me

[thomascanty]

I know nothing about Macs, so my advice is probably more useless than usual, but you said some of the drives were plugged into USB hubs. Have you tried booting with them plugged into one of the computer's ports to see if they're recognized?

Just remembering from the days of yore when things wouldn't always work right at first if they were routed through a hub, but all my experience is with PC's, so it may not be relevant.

[neil_r]

This is of little help but I am new to Macs (Mac Pro for 2 months) using OS X 10.4.8. It has seen every external drive I have plugged into either the USB or the Firewire

[belmondo]

This is of little help but I am new to Macs (Mac Pro for 2 months) using OS X 10.4.8. It has seen every external drive I have plugged into either the USB or the Firewire I have every one of the drive bays stuffed on my Mac Pro. Altogether, I have about 1.5TB of drive space, so I won't be plugging any external drives into it for a while.

[neil_r]

I have every one of the drive bays stuffed on my Mac Pro. Altogether, I have about 1.5TB of drive space, so I won't be plugging any external drives into it for a while.

Apparently there is a 2TB internal limit. I have 4 500GB drives and that is it, I canot swap out for any larger drives. The external drives are usefull for belt and braces backup.

[PetKal]

I knew it !:p
You are getting too old for that.
:evil: Mwuahahahahaahahaah

[belmondo]

Apparently there is a 2TB internal limit. I have 4 500GB drives and that is it, I canot swap out for any larger drives. The external drives are usefull for belt and braces backup.Actually, I do occasionally use external drives for shuttling images between the Mac and the PC. I don't like file sharing on the wireless network.

[DavidEB]

partitioning.... Are you saying the format command is there?

yes. Mac OSX formats & partitions at the same time. Set the drive to one large partition.

you can leave journaling on. It helps the system recover the drive data if there's a power out in the middle of a write operation.

if this doesn't work, I suggest you go to the Apple support bulletin boards (http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=189). You post your query there (just like here) and a whole bunch of apple experts flock to help you.

[DavidEB]

Belmondo: I don't like file sharing on the wireless network.

Tom, check out Western Digital Netcenter drives (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=150). I have 2 running on a network with 2 macs, 1 Linux, and ocassionally my work laptop (ugh, windows). Flawless file sharing. The netcenter drive shows up as a local drive on the mac, and as a network share on windows.