2012 mac mini does not boot when usb 3 drive is connected

Question

2012 mac mini does not boot when usb 3 drive is connected

I have a late 2012 Mac Mini, Ivy Bridge, that has a USB 3.0 external hard drive connected to it. If the hard drive is powered on when I power up the Mac Mini, I get a light grey screen, but never see the Apple logo and the system just sists there. If I boot the Mac Mini with the USB 3.0 drive connected, but powered off, the Mac Mini boots just fine. Interestingly enough, if I reboot the Mac Mini with the USB 3.0 hard drive attached, the Mac Mini boots normally. I have installed all of the OS patches I can find and have not had any luck in resolving this. Does anyone have an idea what might be going on?

Mac mini, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Dec 5, 2012 12:20 PM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

239,213 points

Dec 6, 2012 1:58 PM in response to Pieter Paulson

Hello Pieter,

Sounds like it's drawing too much mA on startup, does it have an AC Power Supply, or is it stricktly Bus powered?

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Answer 2

Dec 7, 2012 2:33 AM in response to Pieter Paulson

Who is the drive manufacturer? I had a very similar issue

with a WD external drive connected with Firewire or USB2

interface. My 2010 Mini would not boot unless it was unplugged.

This was the last WD external drive I will ever purchase as

had many issues over the years with WD drives.

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Answer 3

Dec 7, 2012 8:38 AM in response to BDAqua

I have tried using both a Vantec case and a Rosewill case. Both cases are externally powered. In both cases, if the USB 3 external drive is turned on when I boot up the Mac Mini, all I get is a grey screen with no Apple logo. If the external drive is turned off when I boot up, I get the Apple logo and it boots properly. Once it is booted I can turn on the external drive and it works fine. I have observed if the Mac Mini is simply being rebooted rather than powered on, having the external drive running does not cause the system to fail to boot.

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Answer 4

Dec 7, 2012 11:10 AM in response to Pieter Paulson

Something to check. Power everything down. Turn on

your external drives then do a PRAM zap booting the MIni.

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11243

It may or may not help.

If it doesn't, then check the system log starting from the time

you start up the Mini and see what the last entry was. Wait a fair

amount of time so a gap in time in the log can be seen when you turn

the drive off. Could determine if it is some hardware issue, as BDAqua

was suggesting, or a driver issue.

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