Frequently, when I try to open the (10.9) Finder's "Open With..." menu, I experience a delay that appears to be due to connected FireWire drives. This delay is very long when the drives need to spin up , but is also perceptible when the drives have not spun down. For me, this delay makes no sense: I have no applications that I use stored on my external drives, and I have disabled Spotlight searches of these drives (using Spotlight's "Privacy" setting ). Is there some way to prevent the "Open With..." menu examining external drives? --- Note that this is not a question about speeding up the OW menu in general (e.g., by pruning apps and file type associations), nor about keeping duplicate apps on external drives from appearing in the OW menu (I have none as my Spotlight settings noted above exclude them).

I want to use "startosinstall" so that I can install macOS Catalina onto an external hard drive in order to preload MacOS onto multiple SSD's quickly. I've researched into this and have found websites such as [Erase All Contents And Settings - erase and reinstall macOS in situ](https://grahamrpugh.com/2018/03/26/reinstall-macos-from-system-volume.html) which suggest using: /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall \ --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app \ --agreetolicense --nointeraction --volume /Volumes/External\ Macintosh\ HD I've tried running the above but have had no success and always find that I get this returned:

Usage: startosinstall

Arguments
--applicationpath, a path to copy of the OS installer application to start the install with.
--license, prints the user license agreement only.
--agreetolicense, agree to license the license you printed with --license.
--rebootdelay, how long to delay the reboot at the end of preparing. This delay is in seconds and has a maximum of 300 (5 minutes).
--pidtosignal, Specify a PID to which to send SIGUSR1 upon completion of the prepare phase. To bypass "rebootdelay" send SIGUSR1 back to startosinstall.
--converttoapfs, specify either YES or NO on if you wish to convert to APFS.
--installpackage, the path of a package (built with productbuild(1)) to install after the OS installation is complete; this option can be specified multiple times.
--eraseinstall, Erase all volumes and install to a new one. Optionally specify the name of the new volume with --newvolumename.
--newvolumename, the name of the volume to be created with --eraseinstall.
--usage, prints this message.

Example: startosinstall --converttoapfs YES

but can't seem to actually get anything to run. If anyone could provide me with some working code or show me how to solve this problem, I would be eternally grateful. Thanks for your help

One of my TM external drives (D1) has just failed. I purchased a new one (D2) and, as recommended, began a new TM history on it. However, I would like to keep the history of D1. This is not in order to use it with TM (because I am wary that it could be corrupted), but I would like to have individual access to old versions of my files on D1, even with a rudimentary tool. What I have done so far: I used a file search tool (Find Any File) and looked for earlier versions of one of my files on D1. After a long time (15 min) I could access and read several older versions, which would be good enough for my needs. Question is: D1 could fail anytime, so I want to move the whole TM history to a partition on D2 (which is large enough). I have read that there are issues with hard links, this is where my skills stop. ps. This is *not* a question about transferring a TM from one drive to another; the question has been addressed and the answers I read are negative.

I set up an SDXC card as a secondary Time Machine drive for my MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, Apple Silicon) with macOS Sequoia (15.5). I am using the built-in SDXC card slot, with a micro SDXC card held in a larger SDXC sleeve. I was able to successfully wipe the card in Disk Utility app. I then designated the card as a Time Machine, with a successful initial backup. Then another backup (update). All seemed good. The drive appears in the Finder, with date-time folders listed as expected. However, when I went to run `First Aid" operation in Disk Utility, I get this error:

Running First Aid on “Container disk7”

The calling process or user lacks the proper privileges to perform this operation

Operation failed…

What is causing this error?

I have a not-so-old WD external partitioned drive that was being used for Time Machine backups & holding older files on the other partition. During the last Time Machine backup it didn't complete and just kept spinning its wheels. I cancelled the backup. I'm now unable to get it to completely mount - Time Machine side won't mount. Ive tried Disk Drill app with no luck - wouldn't mount either. Is there anything I can try using macOS to make it mount & access data? I also have this from latest disk utility first aid session: I'm pretty sure it's formatted macOS journaled. I'd like to be able to use the drive for other purposes if not too big of risk of failing again if it can be repaired. But without know what the issue is - not sure what to do! Thanks for any help. Here's the format info: Sooo, wanted to re-format before recycling or other experiments. Looks like failure?? And finally , then tried first aid again.

I have a 1 TB USB drive. I've been using it for months. My main iTunes library is on it. As of yesterday, for no apparent reason, it has become read only. I can't open iTunes. I also tried this... Here is the info panel on the drive: Note that the format is currently "Mac OS Extended Case-sensitive." "Ignore ownership of this volume" is checked, but greyed-out. Backing it up and reformatting is not practical due to the sheer amount of data. # How did the volume become effectively read-only? # Any suggestions for how I can get use of the drive back?

Had a 1TB hard drive in a Windows laptop that I replaced with an SSD. I've put the old hard drive in a USB enclosure so I can use it as an external drive. I plugged it into my Mac and opened disk utility where I saw two new mounted drives:

WINDOWS
RECOVERY

I clicked on the WINDOWS drive (981.9GB) and erased it to the ExFat format. However, the RECOVERY drive is still there (16.85GB). I've tried unplugging it, using the MacOS format, etc. but they still show up as separate drives. How can I merge these into one external hard drive?

After changing to a new external USB hdd for *Time Machine* my previous external USB drive used for *Time Machine* (almost) disappeared. My old drive is a *Western Digital, My Passport 25E3 for Mac* (1-tb). It is **not** recognized in: - Disk Utility - (About This Mac) --> (Storage) - **/Volumes$**ls -l However, I can see the old *Time Machine* drive here: (*About This Mac*) --> (*System Report*) --> (*USB*) --> (*USB 3.0 Bus*) -> **My Passport 25E3** I've rebooted several times and used different cables. What can I do to reformat that old *Time Machine* drive and mount it as just a normal external drive?

My HDD has most likely been damaged after one day of usage (WD MyPassport 2TB). Is there any way if I can erase it? I am pretty sure I have something on it. Disk Utility cannot do it, 69825 error, plus disk cannot be initialised. $ diskutil list ... /dev/disk2 (external, physical): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: *2.0 TB disk2 Running diskutil erase does not help either: $ diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ empty /dev/disk2 Started erase on disk2 Unmounting disk Creating the partition map Error: -69825: Wiping volume data to prevent future accidental probing failed

I have an external hard drive that I put a linux operating ISO on, but now I am trying to erase the external back into ExFat format to store files on it. When I go into DiskUtil, and try to erase it, it just tells me the process failed. I then went through the steps of trying to delete the APFS Container, I find the identifier using diskutil list then typing diskutil apfs deleteContainer disk2s2. It then just gives me a message that it is unable to find the reference to the container Unable to look up the APFS Container Reference for the given Physical Store. I cannot find anything online on how to get this back to a state I can use it, any advice?

I had a 12TB WD drive go wonky on me recently. It would show on Disk Utility but not mount. I tried some Terminal commands to force mount which failed. There are two partitions on my drive. One is about 12TB and the other is 150MB or so. I was able to mount the 150MB partition just fine using Terminal, but not the partition I need (with all my backup video projects). I had the bright idea of creating a disc image of the 12TB parition onto a RAID drive. It took about 26 hours but it made it successfully, but split the dmg files into parts. I tried to open the first dmg file and it didn't work, as I read should work. Great. So I read somewhere that I could try to piece the parts back together. I started to create a folder disk image of all the dmg parts. It was at about 90% done on the progress bar after a whole day so I left it clinking away overnight. I come back this morning and the progress bar is at maybe 5%. There is no cancel button and I'm afraid so screwing my new RAID drive up by force quitting Disk Utility. I don't mind if I screw up the image file I'm trying to create but I just got this RAID drive. Please help! Should I just wait to see if it finishes? Why did the progress bar go back down? Is the RAID drive I'm creating the disc image folder on in any danger of corruption if I force quit Disk Utility? Any insights would be greatly appreciated! Thank you * I checked Activity Monitor and it seems that Disk Utility is not doing much of anything. It did pop up to 0.1% CPU at one point. I also have something called com.apple.hiservices-xpcservice that's not responding. And the System percentage is red between 5-8%.

I need help formatting a flash drive I got off TikTok Shop: I'm not great with technology if it's not plug in go but I tried the following. What am I doing wrong? Here's what it looks like when I plug it in, I click 'initialize' and get the disk utility. Then I tried to erase and got the next error. I tried the whole list from one of the other forums about formatting with terminal and still got this error.

I have an OWC Mercury 6G SSD disk on an external drive case. Suddently, I can't anymore mount it nor on MacOS Sequoia nor on Ventura. The disk turns on and... nothing... it is not even listed on Disk Utility It's not a cable problem (I switched 3 different usb-c cables) nor a disk case problem (I tried with two) I can add that when I switched the drive case, Sequoia asked me if it should use the device and I said "yes"... but nothing happens Is the disk broken? Would it be even possible to recover the data inside??

My MacBook Pro froze and I have the spinning wheel. At that time I had my 2TB external drive mounted of which I have never had problems during multiple uses. I had to hold down power and just restart so I could get back on. Now, since then, my MacBook Pro no longer recognizes my external drive. Nothing comes up at all. I tried unplugging everything, restarting the laptop, trying different outlets, and trying every USB port. Nothing. My drive just keeps blinking white-colored light when plugged in. Now, I'm pretty sure nothing was updated in terms of software. It is a WD 2TB Drive.

I have a triple boot set up on T2 Macbook Pro. macOS, Windows 10, Arch Linux boot off of the internal NVMe drive, which works fine. I also have an external TB enclosure Orico with a NVMe drive set up with Arch and an EFI partition, but for some reason it doesn't show up on the LSBLK list, nor does it show up on the list of available boot options when restarting the MBP using the Option keypress. It does show up on macOS diskutil and in Windows. Any thoughts on how to solve this?

I have a Time Machine backup on an Airport Time Capsule (name: computername.sparsebundle). Now I want to access that backup on a USB disk formatted as exFAT. Several online resources describe the migration **to** a Time Capsule. My question relates to the opposite migration, away from the Time Capsule. Is this possible? If so, how can I migrate this backup from the Airport Time Capsule (sparsebundle) to a USB disk formatted as exFAT?

I had some files on an old thumb-drive, and recently I was going through and discovered that all/most of the files were no longer readable by any of my macs. I seam to remember having similar problems like this while back, and finding an apparent link to my choice of format, so I ran diskutil list in terminal: /dev/disk3 (external, physical): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme *134.2 GB disk3 1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk3s1 2: Apple_HFS my-old-files 133.9 GB disk3s2 And I tried ls -l total 3858320 -rw-r--r--@ 1 kipbits staff 3430100 Nov 21 2016 2015-12-24.pdf drwxr-xr-x 8 kipbits staff 272 Sep 26 2016 2016-sep-14-files -rw-r--r-- 1 kipbits staff 25642888 May 18 2015 myold.mp4 -rw-r--r--@ 1 kipbits staff 884 Jul 31 20:20 someold.txt -rw-r--r--@ 1 kipbits staff 1320157184 Sep 21 2016 someold.iso drwxr-xr-x 4 kipbits staff 136 Sep 27 16:23 anotherdir -rw-r--r--@ 1 kipbits staff 626214959 Nov 5 2016 someold.mp4 drwxr-xr-x 14 kipbits staff 476 Nov 2 2016 sept2016files I think this looks normal? The problem is, I'm not able to open any of my files. I get the following errors: pdf: **The file “some-old.pdf” could not be opened.** It may be damaged or use a file format that Preview doesn’t recognize. txt: 800 byte files are blank rtf: **The document “some-old.rtf” could not be opened.** mp4: **QuickTime Player can't open "some-old.mp4".** To see if additional software is available that will enable QuickTime Player to open the movie, click Tell Me More. dmg, iso: will mount but did not test further pkg: **The operation couldn’t be completed. (com.apple.installer.pagecontroller error -1.)** Couldn't open "some-old.pkg" I found a thread on apple saying "*The partition map type doesn't really make any difference for non bootable volumes*", although i don't get any of these problems when using Master Boot Record & ExFAT. None of the files are more than a couple years old, so i don't think there should be any compatibility issues, and none of the files were corrupted when I copied them to the drive. I have had this same problem with other drives, and they were perfectly usable after reformatting, although this involved erasing files. My question is: **Is there a way to recover my files?** The file-sizes still display that the files are there. Is there a way to save these files and make them readable? ...Also, if it makes any difference, I am using El Capitan(for dev purposes) > **Update------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------(04/Oct/2017)** I did a hexdump for some of the files in question. my output was something like this: 0000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 * 0000370 00 00 00 00 0000374 what does this mean? do you think a recovery app could even help me here? here are some threads that are perhaps related: ...Also could this possibly be related to SIP? I first noticed this problem around when i first upgraded to El Capitan. Or perhaps there is something else going on? I have recently been experimenting with windows and various forms of linux, and have been moving files around with thumb drives. Perhaps I plugged one in to the wrong computer and corrupted all the files? Whatever the cause, I'm wondering if the files might still be recoverable? Is hexdump a good way to diagnose recoverability? **Would buying a recover app just be a waste of $100?**

My friend's iMac would not boot. I ran TechTool Protogo using a thumb drive with TTP 9 to test the hard drive. It reported several hundred failed sectors on the drive, so I recommended we replace it. Before replacing the hard drive in the iMac, I booted off an old hard drive from an old laptop using a USB to SATA adapter to make sure the iMac would boot off another drive, in other words, I wanted to make sure the problem was in fact the hard drive. It booted fine, although I could not access the damaged internal drive as it was encrypted with FileVault. I went ahead and completed the hard drive replacement, putting in an SSD and connecting the damaged internal to my USB to SATA adapter. I expected I could get the password for the old hard drive later to copy any data I could save from it. I used internet recovery to install the original OS that came on the iMac to the new SSD, and then upgraded to High Sierra, which is what my friend originally had on it. The iMac now boots fine. The problem I have is the former internal drive will not mount using the USB to SATA adapter, rather the iMac reports it is unreadable. I also used the adapter to try and mount the hard drive on a MacBook Pro, but got the same warning, Is there something related to FileVault that would prevent this drive from working outside the iMac? I had researched this earlier, and thought I was okay. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated. 1. iMac Model: 21.5-inch, Late 2013 2. OS installed on failed disk... High Sierra 3. OS installed on new SSD ... High Sierra 4. OS installed on MacBook Pro ... Mojave I did find a thread on here with a similar problem and tried fixing it with GPT commands in terminal. I wonder if I have made it worse... Please help me. I really wanted to help my friend and though I got her iMac up and running, I really, really want to help her get files back. ------- Additional Information ------- The drive is a HGST SATA drive, model 5K1000-1000. The USB to SATA adapter is the CablesToGo #3050. @benwiggy, When I booted from the laptop HDD, the iMac started up fine. A window appeared and I believe it said the internal drive was encrypted and asked for its password. I simply ignored it assuming I could access it later as an external drive and get the same prompt. When I tried to access it as an external drive, it said it was not readable and offered me the option to ignore, eject, or initialize. I chose ignore. **Terminal Commands and the results:** Bobs-MBP:~ bob$ sudo gpt -r show disk2 start size index contents 0 1 PMBR 1 1 Pri GPT header 2 4 Pri GPT table 6 244190635 244190641 4 Sec GPT table 244190645 1 Sec GPT header Bobs-MBP:~ bob$ diskutil list /dev/disk2 (external, physical): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk2

External Drive disconnected during backup but now it won't show up again. The light keeps blinking. How do I fix this problem? What I tried and didn't work: 1. New USB cable 2. Connect it to a different Mac The drive shows up on Terminal with

list

as

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI ⁨EFI⁩                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS ⁨Diskname⁩                    2.0 TB     disk2s2

It can't be unmounted with diskutil unmount disk No FSCK is running in Activity Monitor What's going on?

I bought a 128 GB USB stick for my girlfriend's Mac which works solely with an app called LUV-Share. The USB was brand new and was supposed to store HD movies, which are above 4 GB. This wasn't possible because the format of the stick was FAT32 so we formatted the stick to Mac OS Extended (Groß/Kleinschreibung/journaled), in order to be able to store bigger files. Now we have the movies in the stick but when opening the app and clicking the icon "External Storage" we get the following error:

External: open dir error. path = /

And this is where I find myself lost. Perhaps you could guide me to a solution for this matter.