Problem with Macbook Pro Freezing on back up

magsirl

Hi
My OH has a Macbook Pro. He has bought a Seagate GoFlex external drive 2TB.He is using it solely for backing up with Time Machine.

The problem is when he is using the Macbook Pro and the back up kicks in he keeps getting the "beach ball" and the whole system freezes. He has to power off at the button. It does not freeze when the drive is not connected.

The Macbook Pro is early 2011 and has upgraded to Lion and it has 8 GB ram.

Any ideas/help please would be much appreciated.

ps he bought the drive last weekend and he has formatted it.

NeverAgain_2

My MacBook Pro backs up OK with a Seagate 500GB drive, but I have a very small amount of data.

Does he need 2TB?

If not, might be worth trying a smaller drive.

Last time I looked, the Apple ones were not very expensive.

If you get one of those and it doesn't work, the Apple shop should fix it under warranty because everything will be made by them and under one year old.

Niowrtt

Was any software that came with the GoFlex installed? That could be the issue - I was very unimpressed with the software that came with mine.

Check for updates or try removing it before worrying about a hardware failure.

patflanel

Has the drive been formatted to HFS+ ?
Most drives come formatted NTFS so I would check that using Disk Utility.

Niowrtt

patflanel wrote: »

Most drives come formatted NTFS so I would check that using Disk Utility.

This would not cause the OS to hang. Or I wonder, is it just Finder hanging?

magsirl

Hi the smallest time machine is now 2tb and costs £250
Although this sounds an excessive amount of storage space it does give the option of storing plenty of media etc as well as the backing up of the MacBook pro.

magsirl

Niowrtt wrote: »

Was any software that came with the GoFlex installed? That could be the issue - I was very unimpressed with the software that came with mine.

Check for updates or try removing it before worrying about a hardware failure.

Hi the drive still has the memo software on it but hasn't been installed,the only thing running on it is time machine,when the drive was first connected time machine asked to format the drive into the proper file system which was done.

Should the memo back up software be removed even if it's not going to be used ?

Regards

magsirl

Niowrtt wrote: »

This would not cause the OS to hang. Or I wonder, is it just Finder hanging?

Hi,
Finder seems to be working fine.
It's not just the one program that freezes it seems to be whatever is open when the time machine starts to back up from the goflex.

He used the MacBook without the go flex attached and it worked perfect and then plugged the drive back in and after a while it froze the MacBook . The time machine dial was moving but it constantly said backing up 0% of 10mb and did nothing else except cause the open page of safari to freeze and result in having to power off the MacBook.
This has also happened with aperture open & various other apps.

Regards

Scrilla

A quick google shows many Lion users having similar problems with a GoFlex drive greater than 500GB. From my search, no one seems to have found a solution.

magsirl

Scrilla wrote: »

A quick google shows many Lion users having similar problems with a GoFlex drive greater than 500GB. From my search, no one seems to have found a solution.

Many thanks for this Scrilla, guess he will have to keep an eye to see if anyone comes up with a soluation. Perhaps Seagate might release a firmware update to see if this would be a soluation. Many thanks for all the replies.

NeverAgain_2

magsirl wrote: »

Hi the smallest time machine is now 2tb and costs £250
Although this sounds an excessive amount of storage space it does give the option of storing plenty of media etc as well as the backing up of the MacBook pro.

Apple shops sell this drive 2TB drive for £129:

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/H6583ZM/A?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&mco=MjMwNDIxNTg

I would take the MacBook with me, buy the drive, and make sure it worked before I left the shop.

But I'm sure it will.