OS 10.4 fails to recognize the HFS+ partition on my firewire/USB hard drive

N

njwills

Registered
I have a MicroNet 160GB external firewire hard drive that I have split into 2 partitions. One a HFS+ for Mac, and the other NTFS for PC. The plan was/is to use this hard drive as a place to back up files in our lab, where we use both Mac and PC.

Ironically, after partitioning the disk, the HFS+ (Mac) partition would not automatically mount, but the PC partiion does. I wrote a short applescript so others in our lab could double click that and not have to use command-line or Disk utility to mount the drive. Everything worked great until upgrading to 10.4

Now, no matter what I try, the Mac partition will not mount.
My applescript gives me an error that the drive is not mountable.
Disk utility shows multiple partitions, but the Mac one is greyed out, and will not mount. It also gives an error message when I try to verify or repair the disk.

Now here's the kicker, if I plug it into one of our macs that is running 10.3.8, then everything works fine. Applescript, disk utility, everything can mount it and all the data is intact.

It's not a Maxtor drive, so deleting the following files is not an option (cause they're not there)
System/Library/Extensions/IOFireWireMxBt.kext
System/Library/Extensions/MaxtorPowSecDriver.kext

The drive was not connected to the computer during the Tiger upgrade either.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks
 
Well, I would say connect the drive to the 10.3.8, backup the data, and reformat it and see what happens. Did it work ok on the PCs?
 
Well, I would say connect the drive to the 10.3.8, backup the data, and reformat it and see what happens. Did it work ok on the PCs?

Also use DiskWarrior and see if it can detect the drive, if it can, have it run it's repair operations.
 
I think you are destined to have problems with an NTSF and Mac extended partition on a single drive (can't find my source though). I always partition Mac extended and then use MacDrive (mediafour.com), or the equivalent, on my PCs. But, of course, you could always partition it FAT 32 if you are willing to deal with the limitations of this format.
 
I was having issues with Disk Utility and my 80Gig external drive...

It turned out that OSX does not like partition labels with space in them.
I changed the label to "80G" instead of "80 G" and it works fine now
 
how did you change the name of the partition if it wasn't recognizing it? (My partitions are "Mac backup" and "PC backup" so I'm curious about how to change this).


Are there any changes that were made to the way my mac recognizes a firewire device with 10.4? Or any changes to terminal commands?

It just seems strange that my drive will work with a 10.3.8 mac, and not with a newly upgraded 10.4 one. (actually I've tried this on 2 macs where the drive previously worked, and after 10.4 does not).

Any suggestions on what might have been changed in 10.4 that might be throwing me off would be appriciated.

Thanks
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top