Hi people.
This would be my first thread, and I know it's bad for post #1 to be the "why is.." post, but I've searched the board, and haven't found an answer to this yet. I decided not to use the free tech support so others can find this thread in case they're having similar problems.
I have a white 2.0 Ghz MacBook running Tiger 10.4.8 with the latest firmware updates, and 2 GB RAM. I also have an external IDE drive partitioned as FAT32, sitting in a relatively-no-name enclosure via firewire, daisy-chained through my Presonus Firebox external audio unit (I know, not ideal for recording). The MacBook's HDD also has an NTFS partition with XP residing there.
Now, it all worked great for a month now, but this week I started having a strange issue. First I noticed that the fans started kicking in even though I wasn't doing anything special. I fired the Activity Monitor up, and indeed, the CPU load was at 140%. So I looked among the processes, and one named "Mass Storage" seemed to be frozen. The obvious, but perhaps a little dangerous, thing to do was to quit it, so I did. The CPU load returned to normal, and I was still able to access the external drive just fine.
So, now, whenever I connect the firewire drive, the mass storage process hangs. I quit it, and everything goes back to normal from there..
The question is.. Why does it freeze, and also, what is the whole <i>point</i> of the 'mass storage' process if quitting it doesn't affect anything?
When I plug the drive in, iPhoto launches automatically, and by the files that mass storage opens, I'm going to try and track down what's causing it to hang. The last file it opens on the list is /dev/urandom.
Also, now that I think about it, FAT32 probably isn't the best filesystem out there. I do need the drive to be compatible with both OS X and Windows though. I suppose I could try HFS+ under OS X, and then using Mac Drive under Win to access the disk.
I'll look into this further, and even if I solve my own problem, I hope this helps someone else
.
This would be my first thread, and I know it's bad for post #1 to be the "why is.." post, but I've searched the board, and haven't found an answer to this yet. I decided not to use the free tech support so others can find this thread in case they're having similar problems.
I have a white 2.0 Ghz MacBook running Tiger 10.4.8 with the latest firmware updates, and 2 GB RAM. I also have an external IDE drive partitioned as FAT32, sitting in a relatively-no-name enclosure via firewire, daisy-chained through my Presonus Firebox external audio unit (I know, not ideal for recording). The MacBook's HDD also has an NTFS partition with XP residing there.
Now, it all worked great for a month now, but this week I started having a strange issue. First I noticed that the fans started kicking in even though I wasn't doing anything special. I fired the Activity Monitor up, and indeed, the CPU load was at 140%. So I looked among the processes, and one named "Mass Storage" seemed to be frozen. The obvious, but perhaps a little dangerous, thing to do was to quit it, so I did. The CPU load returned to normal, and I was still able to access the external drive just fine.
So, now, whenever I connect the firewire drive, the mass storage process hangs. I quit it, and everything goes back to normal from there..
The question is.. Why does it freeze, and also, what is the whole <i>point</i> of the 'mass storage' process if quitting it doesn't affect anything?
When I plug the drive in, iPhoto launches automatically, and by the files that mass storage opens, I'm going to try and track down what's causing it to hang. The last file it opens on the list is /dev/urandom.
Also, now that I think about it, FAT32 probably isn't the best filesystem out there. I do need the drive to be compatible with both OS X and Windows though. I suppose I could try HFS+ under OS X, and then using Mac Drive under Win to access the disk.
I'll look into this further, and even if I solve my own problem, I hope this helps someone else
.