Finder crashes when accessing my external hard drive

Question

Level 1

0 points

Finder crashes when accessing my external hard drive

I have a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1TB external hard drive where I keep a lot of my extra data. Very recently, I can't pin-point exactly when, the hard drive has been causing Finder to crash, most of the time irreparably -- and by irreparably I mean it will crash and I'll try to relaunch it but it won't work, in fact it won't actually relaunch unless I then click the Finder icon (which had no dot under it), after which it will immediately launch into an "Application Not Responding" state.

The reason I believe it is the external hard drive is because I have two computers, both of which have the same problems when doing stuff with the hard drive, and neither have problems when the hard drive isn't plugged in.

Some weird things: I have been accessing an excel document on the drive and have been saving the document this entire time -- before I began to think that it was the hard drive causing these problems. It seems as though I could open that document and save it without any apparent problems. Same sort of thing when I used Ableton Live recently. I could access my sample library on the external drive through Live's browser and it would seem to work just fine. However, with Live, when I tried to save a project it would immediately crash Live (presumably because Live is trying to save via Finder or something?). I can't remember if Finder would subsequently crash or not, but I remember having terrible issues with Finder crashing around the times I would be using Live and trying to save.

I tried doing a Repair Disk on the external through Disk Utility, but after it was showing only the stripey progress bar down at the bottom and only saying "Verifying and Reparing Disk," for a little while I stopped it and tried to quit Disk Utility, only to have Disk Utility crash and now Finder crash as well.

Another couple of things to note. Finder is not able to copy something to or from the external, or move something from the external to the trash. It will be stuck at 0 percent progress and if I press the x it will say "Stopping" and never go away. However when I do that and then just unplug my external I immediatley get a "Disk removed improperly" dialog and Finder will work again right away.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on May 29, 2012 9:33 PM

Reply

Answer 1

softwater

Level 5

5,556 points

May 30, 2012 2:24 AM in response to zoycobot

Shutdown the computer.

Remove the disk.

Restart the computer.

Connect the disk

Open Disk Utility and do 'Repair Disk'.

This time, don't stop it in mid-process. Go watch TV or something and come back when it's finished.

Then test.

Reply

Answer 2

zoycobot Author

Level 1

0 points

May 30, 2012 11:40 AM in response to softwater

I will try this and report back.

Reply

Answer 3

zoycobot Author

Level 1

0 points

May 30, 2012 5:32 PM in response to softwater

So I tried that and left it for a couple hours and it was still just candy-caning in the progress bar. I just restarted my computer and will try it again to see if it makes any progress this time...

Reply

Answer 4

X423424X

Level 6

14,265 points

May 30, 2012 5:38 PM in response to zoycobot

Goflex drives seem to cause lots of problems for many people. I think they have their own (encryption software, driver?).

As an experiment boot in safe mode and see if Disk Utility can see the drive (assuming it mounts without a crash). Don't try to repair the drive under these conditions since I don't know what that software is for. It's suppressed when booting in safe mode.

Reply

Answer 5

zoycobot Author

Level 1

0 points

May 30, 2012 5:58 PM in response to X423424X

So I booted in safe mode and ran Disk Utility and it was indeed able to see the drive when I plugged it in.

What does that mean? What should I try next?

By the way, an intermission to thank you both for your help so far 🙂

Reply

Answer 6

X423424X

Level 6

14,265 points

May 30, 2012 6:30 PM in response to zoycobot

What does that mean? What should I try next?

What it means is that crazy goflex support software is getting in the way somehow.

I don't know what to suggest at this point. The reason I said not to try to repair the drive with Disk Utility is that I don't know what the implications of doing that will be. I am not sure what that goflex software does other than possible encryption. So repairing the drive "behind it's back" may or may not have bad consequences.

It's your call whether to gamble at this point. Do the Disk Utility repair and hope nothing gets screwed up and the disk mounts when you boot normally (still no guarantee). Or contact GoFlex (do they have their own forums?) to see what to do next.

If you do get yourself out of this I suggest you get another drive (not goflex) in a dumb enclosure (i.e., no additional software). Copy the goflex drive to it decrypted. Then uninstall the goflex software and reinitialize the goflex drive without their software. Hopefully, without their software the goflex enclosure will revert to being a dumb enclosure too.

I refer to enclosures as "dumb" when their only goal in life is to allow you to communicate with the drive they enclose. No more, no less.

Note, OWC has a nice selection of external enclosures to choose from.

Reply

Answer 7

zoycobot Author

Level 1

0 points

May 30, 2012 6:40 PM in response to X423424X

I'm fairly certain (like 90%) that when I bought the drive before I put anything on it I ran it through disk utility to reformat it. Would this have completely erased all the GoFlex software, or is that software part of the hardware enclosure?

Also, since it seems as though the data on the drive itself isn't corrupted, but somehow the interfacing between the drive and my computer through Finder is, is there an alternate way I can copy the important data off the drive to another drive/my computer in the mean time?

Reply

Answer 8

X423424X

Level 6

14,265 points

May 30, 2012 6:48 PM in response to zoycobot

I don't know what that goflex software does nor where it came from. You didn't install any on your own?

Just to check on this stuff post the files from the following places:

your login items

~/Library/LaunchAgents (in Finder Go menu, Go To Folder, type that pathname, click Go button)

/Library/LaunchAgents

/Library/LaunchDaemons

/Library/StartupItems

and in terminal (in Utilities) copy/paste the following line, hit return, and include it's output with the others:

kextstat -kl | awk ' !/apple/ { print $6 $7 } '

Reply

Answer 9

zoycobot Author

Level 1

0 points

May 30, 2012 7:22 PM in response to X423424X

Alright, I couldn't figure out if I could add attachments to posts here, so I've folder-ized and zipped the contents of each of the four locations you listed above. Here they are:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ge0b5d89tbcu15y <- ~/Library/LaunchAgents

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ay6ye0bisyx65tn <- /Library/LaunchAgents

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ykaoikhkr4jnw63 <- /Library/LaunchDaemons

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?k5hcj6ah1421kni <- /Library/StartupItems

And here's the output of the kextstat code you gave:

com.Cycling74.driver.Soundflower(1.5.2)

com.maudio.usb.fasttrackpro.driver(1.8.1)

Soundflower is a software audio interface, and fasttrackpro is my external hardware audio interface.

And to answer your question above, no I didn't install any of my own software except for whatever Seagate had me install the very first time I plugged the drive in (a diagnostics program I believe?).

Reply

Answer 10

zoycobot Author

Level 1

0 points

May 30, 2012 7:29 PM in response to zoycobot

I should also mention that these are the contents of the folder after I've wiped my entire hard drive, reinstalled Lion, and data-migrated stuff from my time machine hard drive (all of which I did before I came to the conclusion that it was my external causing the problems and not my computer itself). I haven't plugged in the problem external back into this one since doing that stuff, so I suppose the contents may be different? Though I really have no idea what I'm doing at this point.

Reply

Answer 11

X423424X

Level 6

14,265 points

May 30, 2012 7:40 PM in response to zoycobot

Interesting. What avout your login items in your Accounts preferences?

To save everybody downloading that stuff:

~/Library/LaunchAgents

com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist

com.adobe.ARM.df0ab5bbe6f698196fcc21e3c1e66dcb758bd911f4d637272d9d8109.plist

com.apple.AddressBook.ScheduledSync.PHXCardDAVSource.F8FFDCC1-8936-45DE-BF21-BF3 C08DF0EF9.plist

com.apple.CSConfigDotMacCert-@me.com-SharedServices.Agent.plist

com.divx.agent.postinstall.plist

com.valvesoftware.steamclean.plist

/Library/LaunchAgents

com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist

com.google.keystone.agent.plist

com.m-audio.fasttrackpro.helper.plist

com.seagate.SeagateStorageGauge.plist

/Library/LaunchDaemons

com.adobe.SwitchBoard.plist

com.google.keystone.daemon.plist

waves.SoundGrid.RawEthernetHelperTool.plist

com.apple.remotepairtool.plist

com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist

/Library/StartupItems

ProTec6

kexts

com.Cycling74.driver.Soundflower(1.5.2)

com.maudio.usb.fasttrackpro.driver(1.8.1)

Is the goflex a usb-attached enclosure?

Remove maudio, specifically that com.maudio.usb.fasttrackpro.driver. If you just move that out of /System/Library/Extensions (or if there is an installer) you need to reboot after adding/deleting kext's.

If no software was installed by you then somehow that external got that com.seagate.SeagateStorageGauge.plist installed in your /Library/LaunchAgents. If the maudio removal doesn't change anything then this segat launchagent is the next to go.

Reply

Answer 12

zoycobot Author

Level 1

0 points

May 30, 2012 7:42 PM in response to X423424X

Login Items:

iTunesHelper (says item can't be found, though)

SizzlingKeys4iTunes

Namely

Hear Daemon

CrossOver CD Helper

Dropbox

GrowlHelperApp

Thanks for saving everybody the time to download. Totally would have done that if I had known how X(

And yes, the goflex is a usb-attached enclosure.

Removing the maudio kext, what will that do? Will I have to redownload the driver for the interface? Will it stop working?

Reply

Answer 13

zoycobot Author

Level 1

0 points

May 30, 2012 7:49 PM in response to zoycobot

I can't find the maudio driver thing inside the Extensions folder. The only maudio related file is M-AudioFastTrackPro.kext. Also of note, I do see a Seagate Storage Driver.kext in there as well.

Reply

Answer 14

X423424X

Level 6

14,265 points

May 30, 2012 8:32 PM in response to zoycobot

That M-AudioFastTrackPro.kext is most probably the kext to remove. The names shown in the kextstat I had you do come from "inside" the kext (no sense going into details here).

That Seagate Storage Driver.kext has me curious though. That should have been displayed when I asked you to do the kextstat, i.e.,

kextstat -kl | awk ' !/apple/ { print $6 $7 } '

Is it possible you just missed it copy/pasting to create that mediafire file? That kextstat command is displaying every kext (in /System/Library/Extensions) that doesn't have the word "apple" in it. Try it again just out of curiosity.

At any rate so there was a segate kext! This was the the "software" I was thinking about that was installed for the goflex external (that and now that com.seagate.SeagateStorageGauge.plist launchagent).

Removing this stuff will "break" the associated code. You can either always reinstall the software of just move the kext back into /System/Library/Extensions.

I believe removing

/Library/LaunchAgents/com.seagate.SeagateStorageGauge.plist

/System/Library/Extensions/Seagate Storage Driver.kext

will be the moral equivalent of disabling that code when you did a safe boot and the drive will mount. But then we're back to that question about what affect does this have on that drive if you run Disk Utility to repair it. I cannot answer that.

It may be that the maudio usb stuff is conflicting with this goflex stuff. So I still suggest you uninstall maudio first as an experiment. If it works you will know. You can live without maudio, but I don't think you want to live without the disk. Which is more important to you?

Reply

Answer 15

zoycobot Author

Level 1

0 points

May 30, 2012 8:38 PM in response to X423424X

Well I am a producer, so I'd say both are equally important! Haha.

As for the kexts, if I look inside the Extensions folder there are actually a whole bunch of kexts that don't contain the world "apple" in the filename. So it seems all but the two I listed above don't appear when running that command in Terminal (which I just tried again and still only got the two I've already listed).

To clarify some things: the harddrive will mount even when not booting in Safe Mode. It mounts without crashing Finder and everything seems fine. I can select it in Finder and navigate through the directories just fine. That is until I start to try to do things with the files stored on the external. As soon as I try to move/copy/trash/save the files then Finder goes completely haywire and shuts down.

So do you think I should try removing that seagate kext and try using my harddrive to see if everything works? I'm hesitant to remove anything m-audio related because at this point I don't want to "ruin" anything else that's currently working just fine on my computer, and as I've mentioned above, having my external audio interface is very important to me.

Reply