Whenever I connect a USB hard drive to my MacBook Air the WiFi breaks

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Whenever I connect a USB hard drive to my MacBook Air the WiFi breaks

Hi everyone. This is my first time asking a question on these forums, so please forgive me is I leave something important out.

Two weeks ago I bought a MacBooks Air (yay!) with 500GB SSD and 8GB RAM. It's been having a very strange problem. Sometimes the WiFi just breaks. Either the Airport icon will go gray and any attempts to connect to WiFi will give timeout errors, or the airport icon will stay solid but no apps will be able to access the internet. I've called AppleCare multiple times, and we've tried going into the Library folder and change a system file to file-old and deleting the WiFi passwords in the keychain. Neither one solves the problem.

What does solve the problem, though, is unplugging a USB hard drive that I have attached. At first I thought that there was a hardware problem with the Orico USB 2.5 in. HDD enclosure that I was using, but the problem is identical with the Sabrent 3.5in. enclosure that I also use. The problem stops instantly as soon as I unplug the drive. I'll enter a URL in Chrome, and Chrome will show the spinning circle indicating that it's downloading the page, but nothing happens no matter how long I wait (eventually Chrome will say that it cannot connect to the internet). But the very second that I unplug the drive the page loads. I can repeat this phenomenon, so it wasn't just a one-time coincidence. I should also note that when the WiFi breaks the Finder (and PathFinder) also lock up and become unresponsive. As before, the moment I unplug the USB HDD they unfreeze and work normally.

I should note that one time this occurred I had two USB HDD devices attached to an AmazonBasics USB 3.0 hub. I unplugged each HDD individually, but nothing happened. The system "unbroke" the moment I unplugged the USB hub.

Does anyone have any feedback or idea what's going on? I've already tried all of the normal things (rebooting, system updates, checking for updates for all apps, both inside and outside the Mac App Store).

I have NTFS for Mac OS X, and all my USB HDD devices are formatted with NTFS. I don't know if that helps at all. I also use BackBlaze to backup everything.

There are a couple of things that could be going wrong. Some of the things that I'm thinking of include:

Paragon NTFS having a bug, but this wouldn't explain why I had to unplug the USB hub to make everything work

OS X having a bug in how it handle USB devices

Hardware failure in the MBA

My current plan is two-fold:

1) See if just plugging in the USB hub with no devices attached to it causes the problem

2) Redownload and reinstall Paragon NTFS

Posted on Jun 26, 2014 8:06 AM

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Answer 1

Keeblo Author

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Jun 26, 2014 9:08 AM in response to Keeblo

I've done some experimenting, and this is what I've found out:

1) The problem persists when I reformatted the USB HDD devices to ExFAT, so the problem apparently wasn't due to NTFS for Mac OS X by Paragon.

2) The problem persists even when BackBlaze is paused, so I don't think that it's due to BackBlaze.

3) The internet cuts out as soon as data begins transferring either to or from a USB HDD device and won't reconnected until I eject and unplug the device.

4) The problem affects data transfers through either USB port.

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Answer 2

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Jun 26, 2014 7:02 PM in response to Keeblo

USB 3 devices can interfere with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. You may be able to mitigate the problem by using a USB cable with better shielding, or by switching from the 2.4 GHz wireless band to the 5 GHz band.

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Answer 3

Sep 17, 2014 8:16 AM in response to Keeblo

I have a very similar problem. It only happens with a pair of 64 gbUSB 3.0 flash drives on my macbook pro. Other USB 3.0 drives and devices are fine. I doubt it's an interference problem, as it COMPLETELY breaks all internet access, and it does not bother my iPhone on wifi right next to the computer, nor my fiance's macbook right there on the table. And it didn't always do it. I am on 10.9.4 now, and some prior version of iTunes and Mavericks was fine.

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Answer 4

Nov 30, 2015 8:20 PM in response to platygadgepoodle

I experienced this for the first time tonight when I plugged in a 64 GB USB 3 flash drive from SP (exFAT format). I found that plugging in the thumb drive on the left side of the system killed the WiFi entirely, while plugging it in on the right reduced download speed by more than half. I can only assume the difference is due to the location of the antennae within my MBP Retina 15, and that the interference mentioned by Linc Davis a few posts up is responsible for the problem.

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Answer 5

JB_1138

Level 1

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Dec 16, 2015 12:29 PM in response to Keeblo

Confirmed here too. I have a thumbdrive that was plugged into the left side of the machine, and I happened to orient my MacBook in such a way that the thumbdrive was between the router (A 2.4 gHz) and the wifi receiver. I spent about five hours trying to figure out what was wrong, and why nothing else in my place seemed to be experiencing any issues. Save yourself some time and try this first!

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