Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!

Quicker mounting of external Firewire drives System
I have an external Firewire hard drive that I only use for backups and storage of large video files. It has a noisy fan so I like to leave it off. When I wanted to use it I found that I would have to wait as long a five minutes before the drive would mount on the desktop. It would mount right away on restarts, but I don't want to do that most times. Here is a shortcut to speed up the mounting of the drive.

After turning on the drive, open Apple System Profiler. Then select the Devices and Volumes tab. Under the Window menu select Refresh. Then select Refresh again. You will find the drive now is mounted.

[robg adds: I've never experienced super-slow mounting times for my external FW hard drives - if someone else has, can you verify this solution?]
    •    
  • Currently 1.00 / 5
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  (1 vote cast)
 
[11,833 views]  

Quicker mounting of external Firewire drives | 16 comments | Create New Account
Click here to return to the 'Quicker mounting of external Firewire drives' hint
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Quicker mounting of external Firewire drives
Authored by: filburt1 on Jul 30, '03 10:47:55AM

My 80 GB Firewire drive mounts in about 10 seconds under all conditions. You should generally follow the prodecure of connecting the firewire cable and then turning it on, not vice versa. Also do this only once OS X is fully started and logged in.

I'm using 10.2.6.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Quicker mounting of external Firewire drives
Authored by: william on Jul 31, '03 03:50:45PM

You can also use Disk Utility, Options, Activate to mount a connected FW drive and unmount is with the Eject button.

The only thing is that a connected drive will automatically wake up when the computer wakes up from sleep.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Quicker mounting of external Firewire drives
Authored by: dave1212 on Jul 30, '03 12:31:13PM
BrentT, your drive and/or Jaguar install sounds messed up.

This is not a hint, just troubleshooting that is specific to your machine, as it is evident that this is not the norm.

My external drive mounts within 10 seconds as well, methinks you have system problems. Check the Discussion Boards at Apple, you might find some help there.

---

---
______

[ IE Toolbar Icons, Desktop Picures, Free MP3s ]
http://www.paulprobert.com/

[ Reply to This | # ]

Quicker mounting of external Firewire drives
Authored by: 9KILLER on Jul 30, '03 01:36:42PM

Not a system problem, necessarily. A few months ago, I started running into the same issue with an external FireWire drive. Turns out the drive was going bad, and "fsck_hfs" was being run on it before OS X would allow it to mount.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Quicker mounting of external Firewire drives
Authored by: ig on Jul 30, '03 02:00:57PM

It may not be your system software. Some older, or just badly made, firewire cases are just problematic for any OS to handle. Also, sometimes the cable is barely functioning. I have a cluster of 5 firewire drives, all made at different times, and by differnent manufactureres. Some of them may even be pre-oxford 911!!

Some of them show up right away, and some require a lot of fiddling (including sometimes using the above tip), or turning them off/on, plugging/unplugging, restarting, etc.
For the oldest two, it is a big hassle.



[ Reply to This | # ]
evident?
Authored by: risc_abacus on Jul 31, '03 04:47:08PM

Your posting is what the second reply to the hint. The first person didn't have this mounting problem nor have you so it is evident it is his machine? I think not.

I have 3 macs with firewire, (out of 7) all are up-to-day and all have issues mounting firewire devices, one a powerbook just had in internals replaced due to a firewire problem. I two different external hard drives (enclosures buy two different companies, a cd-rw... cause an iMac doesn't have a burner, and a new iPod, also a friend brings over his external HD from time to time... pc user). All my system have problems mounting firewire devices in any timely fashion. Recently I replaced my HD's in my tower system so I backed everything (of importance) on to DVD's and some to a firewire drive. I then removed my old hard drives and replaced them with brand spanking new drives, did a clean install of 10.2.3 (have that install cd) then applied all relevant updates. I then rebooted my tower hooked up the firewire drive to extract some data and boom nothing... I waited for 20 some minutes... I had a phone call and left the computer running... didn't mount. This is just typical problem all FW devices I have ever used.

It is evident that firewire mounting is a problem for some system/user and not necessary tied to anyone thing. Typically I don't care because I am not in any rush to access the data, so I have never really did any troubleshooting. I do plan on trying this tip later today.



[ Reply to This | # ]
evident?
Authored by: dave1212 on Aug 04, '03 01:29:31PM

haha man, your system is screwed.. you shouldn't be having those issues.
I have just as many firewire devices in and out of my mac and no issues like you're having. The only time I have had a problem with a firewire device (ext. HD, pre-OX911) was when it was first connected to an older power mac 7500 with a firewire PCI card.
After some research on the Apple Discussion Boards, I found that the PCI card was not supported under older mac OSs and have since returned it.
Don't bother trying to argue on here. Try to help instead.


---
______

[ IE Toolbar Icons, Desktop Picures, Free MP3s ]
http://www.paulprobert.com/



[ Reply to This | # ]
Quicker mounting of external Firewire drives
Authored by: 9KILLER on Jul 30, '03 01:33:16PM

If you'll check "top" while the HD is taking so long to mount, I think you'll see that "fsck_hfs" is running. The disk is being checked out before it mounts.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Quicker mounting of external Firewire drives
Authored by: michel_alarie on Apr 27, '04 10:32:30PM

I'm not sure where on "top" you mean... How can I turn this verification off? I just made a fresh install of 10.3.3. The firewire drive mounted in 10 sec., but when I used "Software Update" it installed a few things including a security update and then It started to take 90 sec. to mount. Could this be the problem? How can I fix it? This is a fairly recent problem I presume.

Thanks,

Mike



[ Reply to This | # ]
Quicker mounting of external Firewire drives
Authored by: regulus on Jul 30, '03 01:33:18PM

I don't have the long mounting time issue either.

My tip for mounting hard drives is as follows. I usually leave my firewire cable always plugged in and find it a little painful to unplug, turn on my external drive, and plug the cable back in to mount the drive. I've found it easier to just put the computer to sleep, turn on the hard drive, and then wake the computer. This mounts it without the uplug/plug in cable stuff.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Quicker mounting of external Firewire drives
Authored by: Az Da VisualizA on Jul 30, '03 05:54:39PM

Maybe it's just the hardware, because I have B/W G3 tower and the only time I'm able to mount an external drive is during a restart, same goes for D/V camera's and iPod. With the newer Mac models it just mounts right when I connect.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Quicker mounting of external Firewire drives - Hooray!
Authored by: krishna on Jul 31, '03 08:53:58PM

I had stuck a lite-on cd-rw into an external firewire enclosure and on power-up it would always show a solid green activity light -- I have to unplug the firewire cable and replug it in to get the light to start flashing, then turn off (and become usable). Yesterday I looked for a command to reset the firewire bus, and all I could find were API calls.

I now have another problem; with an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse connected to my Powerbook G4, I can't force it to sleep (Blue Apple->Sleep). It goes to sleep for a second, then wakes back up. However, this 'wink' was enough to reset the firewire bus; power on firewire cd-rw, solid green light, put computer to sleep, computer wakes up, and activity light flashes and cd-rw working!

Many Thanks,
Krishna Sethuraman



[ Reply to This | # ]
Quicker mounting of external Firewire drives
Authored by: lestmak on Jul 30, '03 06:50:55PM

Certainly one of the problems I've found with slow mounting happens when I put the computer to sleep, switch of the HD, and forget to turn it on again before reawakening. Basically, it would take an age with a certain degree of disk activity in the firewire HD before it's mounted again on the desktop.

Sometimes I've managed to speed it up by opening the disk utility and rescanning for new drives



[ Reply to This | # ]
Quicker mounting of external Firewire drives - Hooray!
Authored by: krishna on Jul 31, '03 08:52:08PM

I had stuck a lite-on cd-rw into an external firewire enclosure and on power-up it would always show a solid green activity light -- I have to unplug the firewire cable and replug it in to get the light to start flashing, then turn off (and become usable). Yesterday I looked for a command to reset the firewire bus, and all I could find were API calls.

I now have another problem; with an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse connected to my Powerbook G4, I can't force it to sleep (Blue Apple->Sleep). It goes to sleep for a second, then wakes back up. However, this 'wink' was enough to reset the firewire bus; power on firewire cd-rw, solid green light, put computer to sleep, computer wakes up, and activity light flashes and cd-rw working!

Many Thanks,
Krishna Sethuraman



[ Reply to This | # ]
Re: Quicker mounting of external Firewire drives
Authored by: Bobson on Jul 30, '03 10:30:27PM

I've got the same problem, but I know why it does it. I stuck an internal HD in an external FW case. It takes about a minute to power up to the point where it will mount. How do I know? If I restart or unmount-unplug-replug the drive, it shows up in the usual 5-10 seconds. If it's plugged in but off, and I turn it on, it takes longer. If I turn it on, wait a minute then plug it in, it's 5-10 seconds.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Quicker mounting of external Firewire drives
Authored by: squixel on Sep 10, '03 10:13:07AM

I just got me an external firewire drive, which is too noisy for me too, and now found out, how to mount it with macosX terminal-
just type in 'disktool' - with '-l' you get a list of all mounted drives with their names- so when you know the name of your drive you can unmount(drag on paperback etc) it and later mount it with 'disktool -m diskname' - just 'disktool' gives you a list of all commands.



[ Reply to This | # ]