macosxhints.com storage device tips

Make OS X see expanded space in RAID setup

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:30:01 -0800

I expanded my RAID from 9TB to 13TB, and after it had finished, I noticed I had to resize the partition in order to use the new space. When I used Disk Utility, I got an error saying "Partition failed with the error: MediaKit reports partition (map) too small." After googling, I found the solution on the "life as i know it" blog, and thought I'd share the basics of the solution.

From the blog post, here's the essence of the problem and the solution:

Basically what�s going on here is that the GPT table is built only big enough for the drive it�s on. That�s a logical assumption - hard drives don�t magically get larger - unless they�re RAID arrays. We�re just removing the GPT partition information, and replacing it. Should things go crazy, as long as you�ve got the start and size information for the partition you care about, you should be good. No guarantees obviously, but I�ve done this three times and no da...

10.6: Fix a Drobo issue on non-64bit-capable Intel Macs

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:30:00 -0800

If you installed the latest version of Drobo Dashboard (currently v1.6.1) on Snow Leopard, and you're also unfortunate enough to have a Intel Mac that doesn't support 64-bit, then you might notice a drop in performance of your Drobo, and possibly your system altogether.

Check your Console logs. If you see something like this...

com.apple.launchd[1]  (com.datarobotics.ddservice64d[325]) posix_spawn("...."): Bad CPU type in executable
com.apple.launchd[1]  (com.datarobotics.ddservice64d[325]) Exited with exit code: 1
com.apple.launchd[1]  (com.datarobotics.ddservice64d) Throttling respawn...

...then the Drobo installation software installed the 64-bit binaries and kexts, eve...

10.6: Make some older FireWire drives work again

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:30:02 -0700

A small number of users lost the use of their older FireWire 400 disc burners (and perhaps other FireWire peripherals) after installing Snow Leopard. I have a fairly new Pioneer DVD burner installed in a circa-2001 LaCie enclosure, and I was one of the victims. The 10.6.1 update did not address this issue. Until Apple remedies the situation, here is a solution that works without any obvious side-effects:

Locate IOFirewireSerialBusProtocolTransport.kext in /System/Library/Extensions, and store it in a safe place. Replace this item with the same extension from Mac OS X 10.5.x Leopard. The date stamp on my copy was October 9, 2007. (You may still have a copy in your Time Machine backup.) After replacing the file, use Disk Utility to Repair Permissions. This step is vital, or else the replacement extension may not be recognized by the System. Finally, restart your ...

10.6: Enable native NTFS read/write support

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:30:06 -0700

Snow Leopard has the ability to mount NTFS volumes as read/write, but it's not enabled by default -- just read only is supported, as in 10.5. Here's how to get full read/write support for NTFS drives in Snow Leopard. First, uninstall NTFS-3G or Paragon if you're using either one.

Here's how to get read/write support for NTFS drives in Snow Leopard:

In Terminal, type diskutil info /Volumes/volume_name, where volume_name is the name of the NTFS volume. From the output, copy the Volume UUID value to the clipboard.
Back up /etc/fstab if you have it; it shouldn't be there in a default install.
Type sudo nano /etc/fstab.
In the editor, type UUID=, then paste the UUID number you copied from the clipboard. Type a Space, then type none ntfs rw. The final line should look like this: UUID...

One way to use an unsupported DVD burner Tue, 28 Jul 2009 07:30:00 -0700 When buying a new DVD burning unit, I didn't waste a second on compatibility issues with Mac OS 10.5. Instead, I bought the first DVD burner available for around 20 Euros: A LG Electronics GH-22NP20. I attached it externally with an Delock Converter USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE. First tests works quite well -- DVD and CD reading, and even CD burning, works with Mac OS 10.5's integrated software and drivers. But serious problems occurred when trying to burn a standard DVD: The burning software, Burn.app in my case, ends with an error stating the disk capacity is exceeded, regardless of the size of the files to burn. There are a lot of fine burning apps for free on the marke... Create lower case FAT volume names Thu, 07 May 2009 07:30:00 -0700 Note: Please see comments for a safer method of doing this! Have you ever been annoyed by those ugly capital letters in your USB drive's names? Well I was and here's how I fixed it: Locate your device: Open up Disk Utility and select the drive. Click on Info, and copy the device name, e.g.: disk2s1. Deactivate the disk (Do not Eject it). Open up a Terminal window, do a hexdump on the device name you just found, and grep for the current volume name: $ hexdump -C /dev/disk2s1 | grep "Pablo" 00000040 80 00 29 08 ac 67 54 50 61 62 6c 6f 27 73 20 4b |..).?gTPABLO'S K| 010000e0 50 61 62 6c 6f 27 73 20 4b 65 79 08 00 00 18 bc |PABLO'S KEY....?| Create a text file containing the new label: echo "Pablo's Key" > input Replace the old label with the new one using dd: $ dd if=input bs=1 count=11 seek=0x47 conv=notrunc of=/dev/disk2s1 ... Restore a full-disk .dmg file to a raw block device Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:30:00 -0700 Like many others, I used Disk Utility to create a disk image (.dmg) from my full disk, with the expectation that I could restore this backup at a later date. Said date came all too soon, and I found myself accused by Disk Utility of offering it a corrupted image. Much investigation and much research followed: the image was not corrupt, but the graphical tools did not allow a multi-partition .dmg file to be restored, nor did they allow a full-disk .dmg file to be written to a raw disk or a block device. Luckily for us all, this task is possible! I hope to spare you much of the suffering I experienced with this hint. For this occasional task, the hdid utility is your friend. You must use Terminal, as Disk Utility does not support this use. First, mount the .dmg file as a block device only: hdid -nomount "/Volumes/Diotallevi/Clean Checkpoints/WDC Image.dmg" Second, determine the block device of the image and destination: ... 10.5: A fix for Back to my Mac and Time Capsule disk sharing Mon, 13 Apr 2009 07:30:00 -0700 I had problems getting disk sharing using Time Capsule and Back to my Mac to work. I was able to see the Time Capsule in my Finder's sidebar and everything worked fine when I was on my network. However, when trying the same over the internet via Back to my Mac, I was able to see the Time Capsule in the Finder sidebar, but any attempts to connect to it would simply time out. After searching the net and coming up empty, what I realized was that I had IPv6 Mode on the Time Capsule (Airport Utility » Manual Setup » Advanced » IPv6 tab » IPv6 Mode setting) set to Link-local Only. After changing that to Node and letting IPv6 be configured automatically, things just started working... I couldn't find this documented anywhere, and hence the hint. Avoid Western Digital external drives' built-in spin down Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:30:00 -0700 A problem with some of the Western Digital's My Book external hard drives is that they have a spin-down functionality built into their firmware. Meaning that no matter what preferences are set in System Preferences, if 10 minutes of inactivity have passed, the hard drive will go to sleep. This is annoying, as even if you are browsing files in the Finder without looking at the ones on the hard drive, the Finder triggers a spin-up, and then bogging down the system until the hard drive has finished spinning up. A workaround for this is to not let the hard drive be inactive for more than five minutes by constantly touching a hidden file on the hard drive. This is done by first building a small script in bash that touches the hidden file and that also checks if the hard drive is mounted, so as to not flood the system logs if the drive isn't connected. Here's that code: #!/bin/bash # Used to not let a volume named MYBOOK sleep volpresent=$(mount | grep MYBOOK | ... Fix a Western Digital My Book drive formatting problem Wed, 10 Sep 2008 07:30:00 -0700 Twice now I have had problems formatting a new Western Digital My Book external drive under 10.5.x. Disk Utility fails to format the drive as Max OS X Extended Journaled with a "Format failed..." message. The first time this happened, I found an obscure firmware update at Western Digital's forums. This time, I found a quicker solution in this thread over at macForums. Here's a short executive summary version: Open Disk Utility and select your drive. Go to the Partition tab, name the drive as you wish, and choose one partition. Partition the drive. Select the partition you just created. Go to Options (on the bottom of the dialog window) and select GUID Partition Table/OK, then click Apply. That's it; you can now format the drive successfully. Create an HFS+/NTFS/FAT32 external drive Fri, 18 Apr 2008 07:30:00 -0700 This hint (from way back in 2003) is still the best I have come across in terms of explaining how to partition HFS+ and FAT32 on the same external hard drive. In this hint, I'll explain how to add NTFS to the mix, and note some significant improvements upon the previous hint's awesome efforts. If needed, print this hint, and then go to the above link for more help (and there's another link further down that may be of some help). To add NTFS to the mix from the previous hint, in the first step, just divide things up into three parts instead of two. Then, after step seven in the first hint, insert a similar-looking step -- put 2s3 at end of command instead. Finally, use a Windows machine to reformat the remaining VOLUME you formatted to FAT32 to NTFS instead. (Control Panel » Administration Tools » Computer Management » Disk Management.) Here's my real contributio... How to create a fully-encrypted HFS+ hard drive Thu, 06 Mar 2008 07:30:00 -0800 The free TrueCrypt 5 was recently released for Mac OS X (10.4 and 10.5 versions are available, as well as Windows and Linux versions). Some users, like me, may be frustrated trying to encrypt an entire drive or partition on the OSX version. TrueCrypt itself does not support HFS or HFS+ file systems so there is no obvious way to create a Mac-formatted, fully encrypted volume. Worse, if you use TrueCrypt to encrypt an entire (blank) drive and then use Disk Utility to create an HFS+ partition, the encryption gets overwritten. After much trial and error and lengthy encryption processes, I have found a solution. Note that for this test I used a USB-attached 160GB hard drive, so speed was pretty slow to begin with. Be sure the drive to be encrypted is either already blank or has been fully backed up to another device. This process will completely delete any files you had on the drive. Install and launch TrueCrypt. Select to create a... Use newer 2.5" SATA disks in a MacBook or Mac mini Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:30:02 -0800 If you want to use some of the new 2.5" SATA hard disks in your MacBook (or Mac mini for that matter), you'll notice that they do not show up in Disk Utility, and that you cannot even format them. They will work externally as a USB device, but will not show up when used internally. That's because the newer drives are SATA II (or SATA 2) and their higher "transfer rates" are not compatible with the Intel ICH7-M AHCI (which only support up to 1.5 GHz) used in the MacBook and Mac mini. To be able to use your new 250GB or even 320GB drive, you have to put a jumper on the two leftmost pins (when viewed from the front, meaning the other connector pins are on the right hand side). This worked for me on a Samsung 250GB drive, as well as a Toshiba MK3252GSX 320GB drive. Convert a drive from Apple Partition Map to GUID Tue, 30 Oct 2007 07:30:05 -0700 While upgrading the laptop hard drive on my Macbook, I inadvertantly partitioned the new hard drive in the "Apple Partition Map" mode, which is reserved for PowerPCs. The normal partition type for a Intel Mac boot drive is GUID. My Intel Macbook still booted from this drive, but having my hard drive in Apple Partition Map mode had two severe drawbacks: I couldn't install Boot Camp. I couldn't upgrade to Leopard! I read a couple guides online, and they involved simply copying your user folder and reformatting the drive, but I wanted a method that copied absolutely everything so that I wouldn't have to install my horde of apps. So, here's how I went from an Apple Partition Mapped drive to a GUID drive for Leopard, without losing any of my data, settings, or having to re-install my applications. Requirements A blank external FireWire hard drive, size equal or larger than your current drive. The free version of ... Use UFS for shared external drives Thu, 30 Aug 2007 07:30:00 -0700 When formatting an external drive which will be shared by a number of users, it is worth considering whether to use UFS formatting or not. The usual recommendation is to use HFS+, but this has a serious disadvantage for shared drives as the drive is mounted as if the current user owns all the files. As an example, consider a user named Fred, who creates a important file on the HFS+ drive and carefully uses Get Info (or chmod if he's a geek) to make the file only accessible to himself. Fred logs out. Along comes Sally, who logs in and has a look at the drive. She does a Get Info on the file Fred made, and finds it is owned by herself. So she proceeds to delete it, as she can't remember creating it. Result: misery. Another formatting choice is to use FAT32, which also allows the drive to be used on an MS Windows PC. However, the same permissions problems occur. The solution is to use UFS, the Unix File... Remove the extra partition from U3 drives via Windows Mon, 06 Aug 2007 07:30:00 -0700 For all those having problems with the useless extra partition used in U3-enabled USB flash keys (the second "CD" mounting full of Windows software), I've posted a detailed solution to the problem on my website. Here's an excerpt with the essential details: All you need is a Windows machine (I found one which had Parallels Desktop installed and it worked fine) and the Drive Key Boot Utility from HP (45mb download, no registration required). Just plug your dead USB key into a Windows XP machine (real or virtual), run the app, click through all the recommended options, and let the software pulverize the drive's U3 enhancements into oblivion. Don't worry if it takes several minutes (with no progress bar), or if the program stops responding; just wait until it's finished. Go b... Daisy-chain FireWire devices in Target Disk Mode Fri, 13 Jul 2007 07:30:06 -0700 This may be obvious, but I'd never thought of it before. Recently I had my G5 in Target Disk Mode, hooked up to my PowerBook, and I wanted to sync my iPod (3rd generation) with the PowerBook. However, I was flummoxed by the lack of an available FireWire port, since the only one was in use. Since FireWire devices can be daisy-chained, though, I decided to try hooking the iPod up to the other FireWire port on the G5, and lo and behold, it mounted just fine on the PowerBook. I haven't actually tried this with any other devices, but I assume it would work just as well with external drives, cameras, etc. Mount and unmount FireWire drives via shell script Thu, 12 Jul 2007 07:30:00 -0700 I run a couple of different backups to FireWire drives during the night, but I don't want to see the FireWire drives during the day, since they clutter my desktop and slow down Open/Save dialogs. So I created the following two scripts to automatically mount and unmount all FireWire drives, then scheduled them to run at the right times: The mount script, which I named mntfw: #!/bin/bash system_profiler SPFireWireDataType | grep "BSD Name: disk.$" | \ sed "s/^.*: //" | (while read i; do /usr/sbin/diskutil mountDisk $i; done) The unmount script, which I named nofw: #!/bin/bash system_profiler SPFireWireDataType | grep "BSD Name: disk.$" | \ sed "s/^.*: //" | (while read i; do /usr/sbin/diskutil unmountDisk $i; done) Save these somewhere (make sure to use Unix line endings), then mark them as executable with chmod a+x mntfw nofw, and you can easily run them from the Terminal. ... Free up missing space on camera memory cards Wed, 27 Jun 2007 07:30:02 -0700 I was perplexed to find that my new digital camera said that my 1GB Memory Stick Pro Duo was only able to hold about 60 pictures at 8.0MP resolution. Exploring the memory card via the Finder, I wasn't able to find any obvious culprit. Then I decided to Show Hidden Files. Immediately, a folder called .Trashes made itself known. Inside that folder was a folder called 501. That folder contained all the images that I had deleted from my memory card via the Finder the last time I imported photos. I was able to delete the photos by dragging them to the Trash and then emptying it. Moral of the story? Always delete your photos from your camera, not through the Finder. Recover/repair a corrupt encrypted sparse image Fri, 27 Apr 2007 07:30:00 -0700 If you have lost an encrypted image, such as after a power shortage or system hang, you are probably familiar with the "corrupt image" message that displays when you try and mount the disk image. Yet you might be able to recover it. I spent some time researching how these files are created and was able to recover mine. I posted the results on my web site. kirkmc adds: I haven't tested this. Make sure you make a copy of the corrupted disk image before trying out the above procedure. It's worth noting that DiskWarrior can repair some corrupted disk images; I'm not sure whether it works with encrypted disk images, but when I recently reviewed the program for Macworld, I tested it on normal corrupted disk images, and it repaired all the problems I was able to creat...