Odd issues when hooking up Firewire Drive

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
I have an odd issue that has developed on my MBP using OS X 10.5.1 Leopard. It only appears to occur when I plug in my External Firewire Lacie Rugged Hard Drive. I only use that Hard Drive approximately once a week when doing a complete mirror backup of my MBP's Hard Drive using SuperDuper. As far as I can tell the issue occurs only once the Hard Drive is plugged in, not because of SuperDuper or the Backup.

Here is the issue: For some reason within a minute of plugging in my hard drive my Dock doesn't work. It scrolls when I put the mouse pointer down to the Dock but it won't open up any icons I click on. It's just like it doesn't recognize the left mouse button. Also, I am unable to select any menus at the top of the screen. I can left click on them and even right click on an icon such as Macintosh HD on the desktop and there is no response. I am able to drag Windows across my desktop though but it seems overall that my keyboard becomes inactive. For example in a open Numbers spreadsheet I am able to use the left mouse button (so it works then) to select a textbox and get the blinking cursor but yet if I type and use even the delete key there is no response. Even after I'm done with the Hard Drive if I drag the Lacie to the trash to eject it won't eject. The only way to eject it is simply pull the Firewire cable out.

I had a few issues with my system earlier and found out I had some bad memory. The memory was replaced and the problems went away. I am worried I had some corrupted files from that time but what puzzles me is I have used my laptop for weeks with no problems. It is only while I plug in this hard drive. In a worse case if I can't figure out how to fix it I feel I'll have to do a complete format and reinstall Leopard and I don't want to have to do that. This only occurs when I do the backup but can be a pain. Any ideas if I can fix this?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    By pulling the FW cable instead of ejecting the drive you have a high possibility of causing a directory damage to the drive. I would suggest that you use disk utility or any other third party utility to check the drive. If you can not do it when you boot from your startup disk you can boot from the macintosh install disk that came with your computer, open diskutiolity and check the drive.



    HTH
  • Reply 2 of 2
    Thanks, I'll give that a try.
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