External drive shows up twice on desktop

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Level 2

476 points

External drive shows up twice on desktop

I have a Lacie "Big Disk" external drive attached by firewire. It keeps showing up as two drives on my desktop. I've wiped and reformatted the drive, run DiskWarrior, Disk Utility and TechTool Pro and can't seem to resolve the problem. The actual drive mechanism is a Maxtor 6 B200PO and all appropriate drivers are up to date.

I know from other posts that LaCie drives can be problematic, but this seems to be a unique situation that defies the usual repair and diagnosis tools. No tool reports a problem with the drive, but two images keep appearing on the desktop - one a generic orange and white drive icon, the other a LaCie icon. Both seem to contain identical data.

Can anyone help me resolve the problem?

G5 Dual 1.8, Mac OS X (10.5)

Posted on Oct 10, 2008 7:55 AM

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Answer 1

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Oct 10, 2008 8:53 AM in response to Jim Hall1

drag each drive to a terminal window. it should show its full unix path. what do you see? are they the same? post the results here.

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Answer 2

Jim Hall1 Author

Level 2

476 points

Oct 10, 2008 9:08 AM in response to V.K.

Thanks, but they don't show much. Before I post the results, I had formatted and renamed the disk. Before I saw two disks with the same name, now I see two disks with different names. Here's what I see in Terminal:

Last login: Thu Oct 9 15:24:58 on console
You have mail.
[Jim-Halls-Computer:~] jimhall% /Volumes/Lacie\ Big\ Disk\ formatted
/Volumes/Lacie Big Disk formatted: Permission denied.
[Jim-Halls-Computer:~] jimhall%

st login: Fri Oct 10 09:01:31 on ttys000
You have mail.
[Jim-Halls-Computer:~] jimhall% /Volumes/LaCie\ Disk
/Volumes/LaCie Disk: Permission denied.
[Jim-Halls-Computer:~] jimhall%

As I mentioned in the first post and it may not be relevant, but the renamed drive shows up as a generic orange and white icon and the "original" LaCie drive shows up as a icon image of the drive case. The "original" drive seems to contain no data at this point, but in the past it has contained identical data to the renamed drive.

All a bit strange isn't it?

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Answer 3

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Oct 10, 2008 9:12 AM in response to Jim Hall1

the command results indicate that you have two different volumes
"Lacie Big Disk formatted" and "LaCie Disk". what do you see in disk utility? does it show two partitions or just one? and what are their names?

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Answer 4

Jim Hall1 Author

Level 2

476 points

Oct 10, 2008 9:18 AM in response to V.K.

Disk utility shows two volumes:

189.9 GB LaCie Group SA "Lacie Big Disk Formatted"

189.9 GB LaCie Group SA "LaCie Disk"

When this first happened I wiped, reformatted and renamed the drive. The first few times it mounted just fine, but later the second drive with the original name and icon reappeared. A small file placed in the second drive does not appear in the reformatted drive. It's behaving as if there are two drives.

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Answer 5

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Oct 10, 2008 9:21 AM in response to Jim Hall1

did you reformat it using the partition tab in disk utility? if so i really have no idea what's going on here. can you try deleting the extra partition using disk utility?

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Answer 6

Jim Hall1 Author

Level 2

476 points

Oct 10, 2008 9:27 AM in response to V.K.

I'm not sure how to delete the partition with Disk Utility, and I did a wipe and restore without creating a partition (honestly, don't know how to).

using Disk Utility's get info command I get this:

Name : LaCie Group SA
Type : Disk

Partition Map Scheme : Apple Partition Map
Disk Identifier : disk2
Media Name : Maxtor 6 B200P0 Media
Media Type : Generic
Connection Bus : FireWire
Connection ID : 58629606454359246
Device Tree : fw/node@d04b51020874ce/sbp-2@c000/@0:0
Writable : Yes
Ejectable : Yes
Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed : Yes
Location : External
Total Capacity : 189.9 GB (203,928,109,056 Bytes)
S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported
Disk Number : 2
Partition Number : 0

Name : LaCie Group SA
Type : Disk

Partition Map Scheme : Apple Partition Map
Disk Identifier : disk3
Media Name : Maxtor 6 B200P0 Media
Media Type : Generic
Connection Bus : FireWire
Connection ID : 58629606454359246
Device Tree : fw/node@d04b51020874ce/sbp-2@c000/@1:0
Writable : Yes
Ejectable : Yes
Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed : Yes
Location : External
Total Capacity : 189.9 GB (203,928,109,056 Bytes)
S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported
Disk Number : 3
Partition Number : 0

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Answer 7

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Oct 10, 2008 9:44 AM in response to Jim Hall1

I don't understand what you mean by a wipe and restore when talking about an external drive. how did you reformat it? to reformat a drive you select the whole drive (the model, not the volume name) in disk utility and click on the partition tab. set the number of partitions to 1 and hit "apply". please do that.

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Answer 8

Jim Hall1 Author

Level 2

476 points

Oct 10, 2008 10:25 AM in response to V.K.

I meant the drive was wiped of all data, a secure wipe, and restored.

I've just followed your directions and I can say we have a real mystery on our hands. No change, two drives still showing up. I did the following:

Eject one of the phantom drives. Erase all data securely on the remaining icon, then partition. Unmount, remount and two drives appear.

I did it to both, and can't get rid of the other drive icon.

I'm at the point I think it's time to get a new drive and physically destroy this one. DiskWarrior and TechTool are still seeing two drives.

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Answer 9

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Oct 10, 2008 10:37 AM in response to Jim Hall1

you didn't do it correctly from what you describe. don't bother with secure erase of separate partitions. you have to do it the way I said. select the whole drive in disk utility, go to the partition tab, set the number of partition to 1 and hit "apply". nothing else is actually reformatting the drive which is what you have to do.

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Answer 10

Jim Hall1 Author

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476 points

Oct 10, 2008 10:46 AM in response to V.K.

Partitioned as instructed, unmounted and powered down drive.

Powered up drive and now have two drives, one named LaCie 4 (new name given in last try) and Untitled 1

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Answer 11

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Oct 10, 2008 12:32 PM in response to Jim Hall1

then I don't know what's going on, sorry. if reformatting doesn't fix it, there is a hardware problem with the external.

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Answer 12

Jim Hall1 Author

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476 points

Oct 10, 2008 12:57 PM in response to V.K.

thanks for giving it the old college try. I'm going to dump it and get a new drive.

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Answer 13

Oct 10, 2008 1:22 PM in response to Jim Hall1

I had the same type of issue with an NAS (Drobo) it showed up as DROBO and DROBO-1.

I just ejected the -1 drive and it has not reappeared.
Not sure if its a Drobo issue or an OSX issue.

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Answer 14

Jim Hall1 Author

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476 points

Oct 10, 2008 3:38 PM in response to Davids8477

My issue began before the last update so I'm not sure it's OSX related. The firmware update from LaCie may have had something to do with it. Certainly erasing and partitioning the drive did not fix it, and my other externals are doing fine.

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Answer 15

Jim Hall1 Author

Level 2

476 points

Oct 28, 2008 8:18 AM in response to Jim Hall1

This is a final followup to my "dual drive" problem.

I cracked the enclosure of the LaCie 400 gig Big Drive and found inside two 200 gig Maxtor drives. I'll never know why they began showing up as separate drives, but there was nothing I could do to get them back to their original configuration. I hate to waste an enclosure so I'll be looking into replacing them both, possibly with larger capacity drives.

The end result is that the problem was not with OSX, but with the drive itself that stopped being one drive and became what it really is, two drives in one enclosure.

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