My mac freezes when i plug in my flash drive.

Hi Calvo819

Welcome to Apple Discussions

Restart the iMac and try it again?

Dennis

HI and Welcome to Apple Discussions ...

If restarting your iMac doesn't help, try a different USB port.

If that doesn't help, check the hard disk.

Insert Installer disk and Restart, holding down the "C" key until grey Apple appears.
Go to Installer menu (Panther and earlier) or Utilities menu (Tiger and later) and launch Disk Utility.
Select your HDD (manufacturer ID) in the left panel.
Select First Aid in the Main panel.
(Check S.M.A.R.T Status of HDD at the bottom of right panel. It should say: Verified)
Click Repair Disk on the bottom right.
If DU reports disk does not need repairs quit DU and restart.
If DU reports errors Repair again and again until DU reports disk is repaired.



Carolyn 🙂

Did you properly unmount the flash drive the last time you used it? I have never heard of a flash drive causing a system crash. if it was not ejected properly, than it is very possible that the data on it got corrupted and that when you tried to mount it the system simply could not read the data and it tied up all the processor cycles attempting to do so. If the spinning beachball was present then the system did not crash, rather the processor was completely tied up trying to read the data on the drive. It probably would have eventually give you an error message and offered to reformat the drive.

More than likely you will need to reformat the flash drive. How you will do it is another question if you cannot mount it or cannot get the Disk Utility program to see the drive so it can be reformatted.

What I would try is starting up from my system CD, when booted from it insert the flash drive, open Disk Utility. If the flash drive is present, select it and see if DU can repair it. If not, just reformat it.

Message was edited by: Al Van Malsen

I had the same problem with my iMac. I scan the usb drive on my macbook and found an .exe virus.