OnyX and Disk Utility do not work...

Not sure what happened but what does it mean when OnyX refuses to open up?

When I go to Disk Utility it just clocks and says "Gathering Disk Info" and never stops (until force quit)

What gives???

[edit] i should note that when my LaCie external is turned on everything works fine yet when i turn off the LaCie the above happens...

It cant check a HDD that isnt on because it cant run the process on a non-spinning disk...

but shouldn't it find my main HD?

If I do a reboot everything is fine up until I turn on the LaCie and unmount it. I figure if the LaCie is unmounted it can still find my main HD and OnyX should still open... no?

I am not understanding the situation here. Is the LaCie disk drive on and mounted and you turn off the disk, or is the disk umounted and you turn of the drive.?

If it is the first case that would cause you a problem.

What happens is this.

When I re-boot the iMac I can go into disk utility and it automatically finds my HD. No issue there.

I have my LaCie unmounted at this point and turned off. Next I'll turn on the LaCie and it will mount. I'll do my video editing and after I am done I will unmount the LaCie and shut it off.

After that I will try to open up Disk Utility and nothing happens. It keeps searching for a HD. I have to force quit Disk Utility or else it will continue to search...

If I power the LaCie back up and mount it and then go to Disk Utility it finds BOTH the Macintosh HD and the LaCie.

Someone on another forum suggested I disable Journaling and go into single user mode and do a fsck to fix a possible bad directory.

Thoughts???

Interesting. Do you have journaling turn on for the LaCie drive (external)?

I am wondering if that is the problem, because I do the same thing as you do.

I mount up my maxtor drive download and edit my video. Then I unmount and shut the drive down. I have journaling running only on the system disk.

i'm not sure if i have journaling enabled on my LaCie drive. I will check tonight when i get home. Would this cause probs? Shouldn't journaling be enabled on the external as well?

Whatever it is - its annoying me!!!!

I don't remember the comple article I read some time ago. I believe it stated that if you are doing video editting it is not a good ideas to use a journaled filesystem, due to a performance hit.

hmmm, i don't think this issue has to do with journaling. maybe i should run fsck in single user mode and see what happens (I will turn journaling off on my system disk first), will this cause any more harm/corruption to the system ?

If you turn off journaling it will cause loss of data. If you want too disable journaling you will need to back up your data and recreate the partition.

i give up, i can't figure out why its doing this. if anyone has any ideas please post...

Is the LaCie drive still physically plugged in?

Maybe that's causing the problem somehow...

I'd try unmounting the lacie drive, and then actually physically unplugging the firewire/usb connector. Then try running OnyX.

well i have the LaCie always plugged in. But its like once the LaCie is mounted and unmounted for some odd reason DU can't find my system drive (Macintosh HD) and OnyX can not open.

Everything else works fine but its just weird that it can't find the system HD after the LaCie has been unmounted. After a re-boot it can but once that LaCie gets mounted here we go again!

I just tried physically unplugging the LaCie (from the back of the unit) after unmounting and guess what, now it sees Macintosh HD and OnyX opens.

This is wacky, it did not do this when I first bought it a few days ago... thoughts?

Hi code 777 - the reason why you have to reboot is because of details still being harboured in the systems memory.

If you unmount the drive and turn it off without rebooting, the memory harbours information that the drive has been attached - therfore your proggie looks for the drive.

The only way to do it to clear memory is to reboot as you have been doing so that your main drive can be accessed without problems.

You could try logging off, and then back on instead of a full reboot, but I am not sure that would fully clear the memory.

well its funny, when the external is off and I pull up DU it does the whole clocking thing. BUT once I unplug the firewire cable from the external DU sees my Macintosh HD right away.

AHHHHHHHHHHHH, what gives!?

It is a bug. My guess is it is something about the way OS X handles the Firewire bus and it does not like scanning the bus where an FW HD is active but not mounted....

Odd you say the same lockup occurs when the drive is physically off? Or do you mean unmounted? Maybe it is something odd about the chipset in the D2. Either way the problem can be avoided by disconnecting the drive so I would just so that. It is not an optimal solution but it works. If you feel like experimenting, try opening System Profiler and attempt to check the FireWire entry. If my guess is right and it has something to do with polling the FW bus while the D2 is inactive it should lock up as well.

The LaCie is OFF, no blue light, no power. If I pull the plug (firewire) from the back then DU sees my Macintosh HD.

My LaCie is set up like this: 9pin-->6pin firewire coming out of the back of the LaCie going directly into my iMac G5. I mean if I have no use for the LaCie while I'm using my iMac shouldn't you just leave it off? Powered off?

i wonder if there is a firmware upgrade for the LaCie D2 External HD. I'll check it out. Looks like everyone else that has the LaCie is fine. Its gotta be something i'm doing...