External Hard Drive Resetting Mac

Hey,

So, a few weeks ago I was using Time Machine to backup my mac. During the process it got stuck -- maybe it didn't, maybe it was just taking longer than usual. Anyway, I stopped it, tried to delete the backup and do it again. As I moved the backup to the trash, it reset my mac. I waited for it to come back on; desktop loaded and then reset itself again. It kept doing this and every time I pugged in the external hard drive.


I've since realised that there's was obviously an error with the backup on Time Machine. What I've tried??

I've tried to repair the hard drive using disk utility when the mac starts up, but I don't have time to load disk utility because then my mac restarts. Also tried doing it from recovery mode (it loads recovery mode and as soon as I plug hard drive back in - restarts!). Worth mentioning, also tried to repair the disk in windows, no luck either.

Any advice about this issue would be really appreciated. Thanks.

Welcome to the forum. What Mac? What version OS X? What do you mean, "I stopped it?" What did you mean "tried to delete the backup?" What do you mean "reset my mac?" Did it reboot, or restore to original factory, or wipe to the hd, or what? Reset is a pretty broad term.

Take a look at what's in the link in my sig and post again with a bit more information so we can try to assist.

It's a MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008), 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3, running El Capitan. External Hard Drive is Buffalo Ministation 500GB.

During the backup it froze and I clicked 'stop backup'. It then began the process of 'stopping backup' I then moved the backup (don't ask me why I did this) to the trash, but my computer restarted. When it loaded back up, it said something along the lines of, 'there was an issue with your computer and as a result it restarted...click open or wait 60 sec'.

I waited it for it to load up again and after it loaded, it restarted itself again, once I unplugged the hard drive it stopped this process. After this, I tried disk utility - same issue, mac restarts when I plug ex HD back in.

Apologies, I meant it restarted my mac, not reset. My Mac didn't reset - that still works fine, it's only an issue if I plug in the ex hard drive. I replaced the usb cable on the hard drive - no luck. Worth mentioning, the hard drive has a 50GB partition so I could use it at work with Windows - this still works fine. But, if I try to repair the disk on Windows it will on repair the 50GB partition, it won't let me access the mac side of the HD.

Also, I tried deleting the "com.apple.TimeMachine.plist" file, did the same in System Preference - Time Machine, there's no backups.

Thanks

MacInWin said:

Welcome to the forum. What Mac? What version OS X? What do you mean, "I stopped it?" What did you mean "tried to delete the backup?" What do you mean "reset my mac?" Did it reboot, or restore to original factory, or wipe to the hd, or what? Reset is a pretty broad term.

Take a look at what's in the link in my sig and post again with a bit more information so we can try to assist.

Click to expand...

I would recommend starting from the Recovery Partition, run Disk Utility on the boot drive, then reboot. If that doesn't get you going, then I'd look at Onyx from www.titanium.free.fr. Get the proper version for El Cap and run it. Gatekeeper will complain about it, but just right click on the program and then tell Gatekeeper to run it. It's safe. Finally, if that doesn't work, there is a possibility that something is wonky in the USB port. Is there anything else you can use in that port to test that? Thumb drive? What is curious is that the hardware doesn't force a problem, otherwise you couldn't do a test on the Windows partition, so it has to be something the system is doing with the Mac (TimeMachine) partition. You might, while you are booted in the recover partition, see if you can run DU on the external.

Hey. Thanks for the info.I'll give it a go when I get time at the weekend.