Airport Extreme Hard drive disconnecting randomly

The USB port on the AirPort Extreme is borderline as far as its abitlity to supply adequate power to an attached hard drive, even if the hard drive has its own power supply.

If you are not already doing so, it might be a good idea to try a powered USB hub with your setup. It may, or may not solve your particular issue, but it has worked wonders on my network here.

I was having the external HD dismounted (disconnected) until I unchecked "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" in System Preferences > Energy Saver

Thanks bobwild...my troubles are finally over!!

Bob, So if you have an external drive installed on your airport extreme base station but from your MacBook Pro select the above preference option the setting will propogate from your Mac through the network to the external hard drive on the AEBS?

Many thanks.

That is my understanding.

Thanks I will give it a go this evening.

Similar problem to JohnBurns original post, only bob's solution isn't the one for me, I've tried it already and I still get random disconnects. This problem seemed to arise around the time that I upgraded to Lion, in other words, recently. I've been living with it, but I realize I shouldn't have to! I get a small prompt with a 'network interuption' and the name of the hard drive, with an option to "Ignore" or "Reconnect", and if I "Ignore" it seems to resolve itself. But this happens frequently throughout the day.

I have found a fix for my situation.

I need to eject the drive from finder before putting my MBA to sleep. When opened it connects OK.

This will be lengthy--bear with me, please. I've been watching this and other threads and figure it's time for me to share my faith, hope, experience, and dismay.

Right about now, between 9:30 and 10:30 pm I receive the little pop-up box that warns of "server connections interrupted" and offers the choice of disconnect or ignore. I've tried both options; still the problem exists. This has been tormenting me. I've searched with Google and the Apple archive--others experience it; no solution. So far that I can see.

My setup is this. Older MBP, Snow Leopard latest, Airport Extreme, latest, with an external usb drive plugged into Airport. By the way, still have the same problem regardless of whether I have Put Hard Drive to Sleep when Possible unchecked in Energy preference pane. Also: my external is a bare drive, no enclosure. It's plugged into the AE by way of OWC's hard drive adapter, which comes with a power block. AE runs the drive regardless of whether it's plugged into the power brick or not. And the problem has occurred--regardless of whether the drive's plugged into the brick or not. So that's out. Or at least doesn't make a difference here.

Finally I began watching things by keeping Console open. I can see what happens. Every two minutes or so, the computer loses the connection with the drive. Seeks a "reconnect token."

Here's a snippet from Console; the external drive is called "In the closet":

1/18/12 10:03:44 AM KernelEventAgent[68] tid 00000000 type 'afpfs', mounted on '/Volumes/In the closet', from 'afp_0TQD7k1dfX4r00iuKR0Pyetl-1.2d000003', not responding

1/18/12 10:03:44 AM KernelEventAgent[68] tid 00000000 found 1 filesystem(s) with problem(s)

1/18/12 10:03:44 AM KernelEventAgent[68] tid 00000000 received event(s) VQ_NOTRESP (1)

1/18/12 10:03:44 AM kernel ASP_TCP Disconnect: triggering reconnect by bumping reconnTrigger from curr value 0 on so 0x9125a08

1/18/12 10:03:44 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect started /Volumes/In the closet prevTrigger 0 currTrigger 1

1/18/12 10:03:44 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: doing reconnect on /Volumes/In the closet

1/18/12 10:03:44 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: posting to KEA EINPROGRESS for /Volumes/In the closet

1/18/12 10:03:44 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: Max reconnect time: 30 secs, Connect timeout: 15 secs for /Volumes/In the closet

1/18/12 10:03:44 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: connect to the server /Volumes/In the closet

1/18/12 10:03:44 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: Logging in with uam 8 /Volumes/In the closet

1/18/12 10:03:44 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: Restoring session /Volumes/In the closet

1/18/12 10:03:44 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: get the reconnect token

1/18/12 10:05:44 AM KernelEventAgent[68] tid 00000000 received event(s) VQ_NOTRESP (1)

1/18/12 10:05:44 AM KernelEventAgent[68] tid 00000000 type 'afpfs', mounted on '/Volumes/In the closet', from 'afp_0TQD7k1dfX4r00iuKR0Pyetl-1.2d000003', not responding

1/18/12 10:05:44 AM KernelEventAgent[68] tid 00000000 found 1 filesystem(s) with problem(s)

1/18/12 10:05:44 AM KernelEventAgent[68] tid 00000000 received event(s) VQ_NOTRESP (1)

1/18/12 10:05:44 AM kernel ASP_TCP Disconnect: triggering reconnect by bumping reconnTrigger from curr value 1 on so 0x9125a08

1/18/12 10:05:44 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect started /Volumes/In the closet prevTrigger 1 currTrigger 2

1/18/12 10:05:44 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: doing reconnect on /Volumes/In the closet

1/18/12 10:05:44 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: posting to KEA EINPROGRESS for /Volumes/In the closet

1/18/12 10:05:44 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: Max reconnect time: 30 secs, Connect timeout: 15 secs for /Volumes/In the closet

1/18/12 10:05:44 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: connect to the server /Volumes/In the closet

1/18/12 10:05:44 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: Logging in with uam 8 /Volumes/In the closet

1/18/12 10:05:44 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: Restoring session /Volumes/In the closet

1/18/12 10:05:44 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: get the reconnect token

Note the KEA EINPROGRESS--lots of discussion elsewhere about that. See to that there is a problem with "1 file system"; don't know if that refers to the basic file system that fsck fixes.

The above was two days ago. Much tinkering in the meantime. Here's a snippet from this afternoon.

1/20/12 2:08:40 PM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_mount: /Volumes/In the closet, pid 2245

1/20/12 2:08:47 PM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_mount: /Volumes/In the closet new, pid 2245

1/20/12 2:11:27 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[144] (com.apple.pbs) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

1/20/12 2:12:00 PM KernelEventAgent[68] tid 00000000 received event(s) VQ_NOTRESP (1)

1/20/12 2:12:00 PM KernelEventAgent[68] tid 00000000 type 'afpfs', mounted on '/Volumes/In the closet', from 'afp_0TQD7k1dfX4r00iuKR0Pyetl-1.2d000005', not responding

1/20/12 2:12:00 PM KernelEventAgent[68] tid 00000000 type 'afpfs', mounted on '/Volumes/In the closet new', from 'afp_0TQD7k1dfX4r00iuKR0Pyetl-2.2d000006', not responding

1/20/12 2:12:00 PM KernelEventAgent[68] tid 00000000 found 2 filesystem(s) with problem(s)

1/20/12 2:12:00 PM KernelEventAgent[68] tid 00000000 received event(s) VQ_NOTRESP (1)

1/20/12 2:12:01 PM kernel ASP_TCP Disconnect: triggering reconnect by bumping reconnTrigger from curr value 0 on so 0xa4cf380

1/20/12 2:12:01 PM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect started /Volumes/In the closet prevTrigger 0 currTrigger 1

1/20/12 2:12:01 PM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: doing reconnect on /Volumes/In the closet

1/20/12 2:12:01 PM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: posting to KEA EINPROGRESS for /Volumes/In the closet

1/20/12 2:12:01 PM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: Max reconnect time: 30 secs, Connect timeout: 15 secs for /Volumes/In the closet

1/20/12 2:12:01 PM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: connect to the server /Volumes/In the closet

1/20/12 2:12:01 PM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: Logging in with uam 8 /Volumes/In the closet

1/20/12 2:12:01 PM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: Restoring session /Volumes/In the closet

1/20/12 2:12:01 PM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect started /Volumes/In the closet new prevTrigger 0 currTrigger 1

1/20/12 2:12:01 PM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: reconnect already in progress for /Volumes/In the closet new, going back to wait

1/20/12 2:12:01 PM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: get the reconnect token

1/20/12 2:12:01 PM KernelEventAgent[68] tid 00000000 received event(s) VQ_NOTRESP (1)

1/20/12 2:12:02 PM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: already reconnected socketID 1 on /Volumes/In the closet new

1/20/12 2:12:02 PM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_DoReconnect: get the reconnect token

You can see the recurrences. You'll see that there are now two volumes; the new one is In the Closet new. And now there are two problem file systems.

This whole thing is, I believe, related to Airport. I have Lion installed on the computer as well. When running Lion the same problem (and similar transcripts) appear there.

I believe the external drive's file structure(s) becomes easily corrupted. These problems arose with and were perhaps involved with one other factor. I use a backup program called DejaVu. DV copies files to the external HD on a schedule. Used it for years. Sometimes when copying big folders containing photographs, there'd be a crash and the HD on the desktop would be blown away--suddenly dismounted. There were certain photos that had features/flaws that the perl scrip or whatever it was doing the work couldn't stomach and would it crash; even the Finder would go down. And Finder itself couldn't copy some of these photo folders. In any case, I think this process mucked up the file structure system(s) in the external HD.

Understand, too, that throughout this process I tried all sorts of variations in Airport, changing settings, putting them in manually, etc. Today, right now, I've made a point of turing off (in Airport) SNMP, under Advanced > Logging and Statistics. Also tinkered endlessly with the Network prefpane. (Everything I've been describing pertains, whether connecting wirelessly or by ethernet.)

So . . . I took the external HD (out of the closet) and plugged it into the Mac. DiskDoctor indeed found problems and fixed them. Back to AE. Still got the Console messages you see above but the external HD would stay mounted on the Desktop. Hmm.

So . . . I bought and downloaded Disk Warrior. Haven't received the CD yet so I've been running Warrior on the Mac or the other internal drive containing Lion. DW works and fixes things. I'm glad to have it, finally. However, when I ran it on the problem drive (the one that always seeks to disconnect) Warrior actually CRASHED. Tried it a couple of times, same crash, same place--decided that it was getting too risky. I'll wait for the CD, boot up from that, and try again. RTFM, it says here.

However--meanwhile I tried something else entirely. The external drive is 750 gigs. Not that much on it yet. I used DiskDoctor to repartition it into two volumes; it saved the portion of the HD that already had data of course. I apportioned that data between the two volumes (on the same drive). Put photo-oriented folders in one; and almost exclusively text data in the other. As a result I have been able to use DejaVu to do its usual backups to each, apportioning the kinds of data to their respective volumes. No crashes.

And, get this, no messages on Console such as you see above. We're on to something here.

Looking at Console now I see that the two volumes were mounted at 5:56 this afternoon and there have been no "get reconnect token" messages on Console.

Reconfiguring the external drive, repartitioning it, seems to have changed things. I don't dare say solved. However, it is now 9:59 and I have not yet gotten my "server connections interrupted" message.

Now: 10:19, no problem.

I'll post this--simply for what it's worth. Watch the doings in Console, doctor the external drive, repartition it if need be--trying turning things off in Airport Utility? What the ****?

Good luck! Sorry to be so longwinded.

Alarik

Any new updates on this one? I am having the same problems..

Yes, my update is that I was sick of this issue so bought a dedicated NAS which works quickly an flawlessly. All iTunes, iPhoto, imovie, PS, files, and other media is stored there and my MBA is now just a client requiring no SSD space.

I'm having the same issue.

Let's hope this is not the only solution. I don't want to buy an NAS.

I have this problem for a long time. Sometimes I can use the airdisks for days or a week, without any problems.

Sometimes it takes only a few hours to get into this problem.

Every time I have to restart the airport and the 2 attached disks.

I'm having the same issue. My network is pretty much all Macs. I have one PC but I get the same issue. I installed the same setup for a client and their network is all PCs. They have the same issue.

Both of us have a Seagate 3TB external drive that is connected to it's own Power Supply.

I called Apple Support and they said that I needed to unplug the hard drive and then plug it back in and then the Airport Extreme would recognize the hard drive.

That doesn't seem like a reasonable solution to do each time I want to use the Hard Drive.

I'd love to hear if there is a solution.

Thanks.

Tracy

Which NAS did you end up purchasing?

My old TimeCapsule does the same thing, usually every 121 seconds.
Keeps on disconnecting until I reboot it.

Does it even when no backup is running.

It has an internal 4TB Hitachi DeathStar.