Question on Hard Drive (External)
 

Last Night I started getting some strange behavior from my MyBook Essential edition. After I plug it into my MacBook running leopard, the drive does not appear on the desktop or in finder. However, my itunes library, 100% stored on the drive, functions perfectly. When I open iPhoto the images are there, again all on the external. When i tell iPhoto to show file, the drive pops up but is grayed out. I can copy, cut paste and everything from the window iphoto brings up. but as soon as I close the window, it is gone. The drive is listed as mounted in Disk Utility and passes all the tests I can run. What is going on? I have tried unplugging the drive from the computer and power and i let it sit overnight. But, nothing. Is there a way to reset the harddrive, or does this sound likt a settign I have mistakenly activated?

have you unchecked the show 'external disks' in the finder prefs?

May we please see a screenshot of Disk Utility, when the drive is selected?

Trevor

Absolutely,
Disk Utility Screenshot


Finder Pref Screensho

Thanks. Can we also see the results of the following commands, copy/pasted into your Terminal, making sure to hit the Return key at the end of each line?

ls -al /Volumes

id

df

echo "done"


Trevor

Also, the finder window, mind you that the only way I accessed this was via iPhoto, "Show File" If I open up finder regularly nothing shows.
Via iPhoto:
iPhoto finder
Via Finder from dock icon:
Regular Finder

There's the reason! You've got an old mount point in your /Volumes folder--see that you show both "160 GIG" and "160 Gig 1"?

Let's see if there's anything in that old mount point before we delete it, then if there isn't we can just delete it altogether. That should fix the issue.

First, power down the computer. (I suggest this instead of just dismounting or disconnecting it because your computer seems to be a bit 'confused' about exactly where it is mounted, so this is the safe way. You probably could just dismount it from Disk Utility if you're feeling daring, though.)

Then, physically disconnect the Western Digital "160 Gig" drive. Make sure it's not connected to the computer, because we may be deleting things soon, and I don't want to be deleting real data on this drive.

Now, boot the computer. In the Finder, go to the Go menu, and select "Go to Folder". In the dialog that comes up, type exactly the following:

/Volumes/160 GIG

This should, in theory, open up a folder named 160 GIG. Make sure that there's nothing in it, or if there is and you want to keep whatever it is, then copy it somewhere else safe. Don't connect your USB Western Digital "160 Gig" drive and copy it to there, though.

Once that folder is empty, or else there's no longer anything useful for you in that folder, close the Finder window. (Don't forget this step, or some of the later commands won't work.)

Then open up your Terminal, and copy/paste the following command. Make sure to copy/paste, this is a command that deletes things using root privileges. If you get it wrong, you could delete very important things on your hard drive. After you've copy/pasted, double check it to make sure it all looks the same as it does in the forum. Then triple check that the Western Digital USB drive is not connected. Then hit Return after this command:

sudo rm -R /Volumes/"160 GIG"

You will need to enter your admin password. If you've not used commands with 'sudo' before, you may get a standard warning about its use.

When the command completes successfully, there should be no feedback, just another prompt. If there's any error, you should get an error message. If that is the case, let us know what the error message is. If there's none, let's verify that that mountpoint is gone. Enter the following command, which shouldn't show any trace of anything named "160 GIG" or "160 Gig 1" or anything else like that.

ls -al /Volumes

Let us know what happens.

Trevor

Ok, this looks like fun, will get back to you ASAP. -DC

Hmm, I did as you said, ran the command to do the delete, I entered my password, then got another prompt. I entered the second line and there was no trace of anything called 160 Gig or anything like it. I then closed terminal, restarted, and then plugged the drive back in. Nothing. Grrrr.

By the way, for Terminal output, it is probably easier for both you and us if you just copy/paste the text to the forum inside of [code] tags instead of showing screenshots.

Now that we've eliminated the old incorrect mount point, with the "160 Gig" drive plugged in can we see the results of the command
df
?

Also, is the "160 Gig" drive still showing up in Disk Utility?

Trevor

drive is still showing in disk utility

The link to the results of ls -al /Volumes is now missing the image. Can you copy/paste that information here?

Also, please check your logs for messages that are time-and-date-stamped to coincide with connecting the hard drive. What log messages do you get?

You can easily view logs using the Console app, in /Applications/Utilities.

Trevor

Last login: Fri Nov 16 16:15:17 on ttys000
Macintosh-6:~ DC$ ls -al /Volumes
total 24
drwxrwxrwt@ 5 root admin 170 Nov 16 16:14 .
drwxrwxr-t 34 root admin 1224 Nov 16 14:06 ..
-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 DC admin 6148 Nov 16 14:27 .DS_Store
drwxr-xr-x@ 20 DC DC 748 Nov 16 08:58 160 Gig
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 Nov 16 14:30 Macintosh HD -> /
Macintosh-6:~ DC$

what am i looking for in console? there's a lot of stuff in here!!

In the image that is no longer up showing the results of ls -al /Volumes, "160 Gig" was not shown in your /Volumes directory. Now it is. Is it showing on your Desktop now?

Look for what occurred in the logs at the same time as you connect the "160 Gig" drive. If you don't know what time you connected it, check what time it is now, and connect it again.

Then show us the messages that appear at the same time as you connect it (and shortly after).

Trevor

Ok, THe disk is still not appearing, I get a message in console that confirmed a successful ejection, however, upon reinserting the USB connector, there was no message in console at all. As I write this the following message came up

Nov 16 17:30:24 Macintosh-6 kernel[0]: ath_newassoc:mac=00:18:de:d5:5f:44 Caplag=0x0 Flags: SHORTGI

as well as some DNS stuff that i assume comes from safari

Don't know if that means anything.

I *think* that the ath_newassoc line is about your Atheros chipset wireless hardware. I don't think it's related to your USB hard drive.

Was that from system.log? Or can you look in system.log if not?

Trevor

that was from system.log

Has stopped since I turned off the airport card