External Hard Drive as Default Directory | Panic!

[Alokk]

Hello Experts,

I had set my external hard drive as the default download directory for vuze. Some how the macbook had restarted & the problem started as follows:
1. Vuze started but the hard drive took time to get discoverable (this is where the real problem started)
2. All torrents (active, paused) were found stopped. When I right clicked to start, they turned red (error: torrent....)
3. Vuze had automatically made a invisible duplicate folder and all torrent path was changed to that folder. (It had the same name as my external HD)
4. Went in Options to change (re-set) the default directory, even after clicking the path, vuze reads that as volumes/externalHD 1/vuze downloads instead of reading volumes/external HD/vuze downloads
5. I checked one such torrent - clicked show in finder - found that auto folder vuze created - deleted it, disabled internet connection, restarted vuze, tried to set the external drive again.... Panic! Pl help.

 

 

[parg]

Hmm, Vuze normally refuses to create the folder in /volumes in this situation - I assume you're running a recent version? Even if it has created a folder there it won't have changed any path names at all (for downloads or torrents), it will just be trying to use that location.

Normally you can fix things by removing the folder with the same name as the external HD in /volumes, remounting the drive in the same place, starting Vuze, right-clicking on any torrents that are in an error state and selecting 'force recheck'.

If the HD refuses to remount in the old location you migth be able to 'symbolically link' the old directory to the new mount point?
 

[Alokk]

If the HD refuses to remount in the old location you migth be able to 'symbolically link' the old directory to the new mount point?

Thanks for the reply.

Could you please guide how to symbolically link!

 

[GaryE]

Ok I have had this exact same problem.

Your external HD is a raid right?

What happened is that the partition table on one of your drives in the RAID got corrupted.  So what used to appear as a single HD is now appearing as two separate HD's.

What I did was get out my old external drive and started copying everything over to my old drive so that I could reformat the newer drive.

Well that took about 36 hours on and off.

So I finished it up . . . and I was about to reformat (and repartition) the newer raid . . . but before I did the reformat . . . I took a look and bingo the newer drive repaired itself.  I was back to only one volume showing! I fired up Vuze and all was well. I think I did have to force recheck a few torrents . . . but that was it.

This happened about I do not remember exactly about 6 weeks ago.  I have not had a problem since.

So to be more specific if you go into the terminal do the following:

cd /Volumes
ls
you will then see a list of all of your Volumes (or hard drives if you prefer)
I suspect you will see two listed for your external drive when there was once only one.

If that is correct that is exactly what happened to me.

Being a unix guy I thought . . . well I will just rename them.  So I renamed "ExternalHD" "ExternalHD 2" and I renamed "ExternalHD 1" "ExternalHD" then I renamed "ExternalHD 2" "ExternalHD 1"

I did and everything was happy in Vuze.  Yeah!!!!!!

The next day I double clicked on a video on the externalHD and I could not load it.  It would only run when the drive now named "External" had the name "External 1".  ARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH

That is when I started panicking and contacting the HD vendor etc.  They told me to backup the raid and reformat it and then copy the data back onto it.

So if this is all the same as your problem (and your description of the problem makes me think there is about a 99.5% chance I am correct).  Just leave vuze shut down for a few days.  Leave the computer and the HD running for those few days.  Hopefully it will repair itself.  If it does not . . . give it a few more days LOL.  Then if it still has not repaired itself . . . start copying files to another drive or computer or whatever . . . I am far from an expert on RAID but maybe the act of using the external HD extensively (to copy files from it) is what triggered it to repair itself.  I do not know . . . all I know for sure is that it did repair itself. So if waiting alone does not work start exercising the thing and then see what happens.

You can try to symbolically link (or aliases or whatever you want to call it) all of the files but if you have a significant number of files (I had over 10,000 or some other absurdly large number) it will take a lot of effort and you will need to write a program or whatever to do it and then it is still far from an ideal situation.  So I would personally leave that as a last resort.  If you only have like 50 files or something you could do it manually . . . but again let us leave that as a last resort.

I personally discounted the idea (I did think of doing that when I had the problem) in favor of renaming the Volumes.  If the wait and see approach does not work, nor does the approach to start copying files off of the drive . . . I can talk you through renaming the Volumes . . . but there is not much point if you like me will then not be able to use the files.  The good news is that renaming the volumes at the unix level only takes about 2 minutes.  LOL  But again I would not advise that approach.

Really you want to get your raid healthy again.  That is the best long term approach here.

[ekstasee]

Have you used "Disk Management" in Windows to set a "Drive letter" for your external HDD.  IF not, this is most likely the problem.  When you do not set a drive letter for a specific external drive (optical, hdd, memory stick, floppy ??  yeah, I know!) Windows will allocate the next available letter, so, if you use several external drives and switch them on out of the initial order when you designated the ext drive for Vuze, the default Vuze drive will most lilely have a different "drive letter" and hence, Vuze will not be able to find the relevant folders/files because it will be "looking" at the wrong drive.

(Just digressing "off topic", if you use many internal and external drives/partitions as do I AND you are not using a "floppy" anymore, use "Windows Disk Manager"  (or a third-party tool) to re-allocate drive letter  "A"  &/or  "B"  to your optical drives.  This will free-up other letters for your HDD's/flash drives. I allocate letters from D onwards to my internal HDD's/partitions and from Z backwards for my external HDD's/partitions. Although I could, I do not allocate a letter for my flash drives (mem sticks)  and just allow Windows to allocate any available letter when needed.)

[Alokk]

Hello Everyone,

Well after nothing worked out last night,  I just shut down everything. This morning I started one by one, directed vuze again to set the default directory (as my external drive) it showed two folders again. 1. My actual External HD icon and 2. A folder with name External HD 1
I just clicked on my HD icon, checked my torrents, started them and voila!! Back to normal.
These options were not found yesterday. Hey GaryE perhaps the raid disk repaired itself.
But this duplicate folder I cant find in my Finder window to delete it. But since alls running well I chose to forget that.
Thanks to all you for your valuable knowledge share here. Happy Torrenting!

 

[GaryE]

ekstasse he is using a mac so giving him windows specific advice is probably not going to work LOL

If you still see the two drives your disk has not fully repaired itself.  It is certainly possible that it is still being repaired however.  ;-)

You are not going to see the "folder" in the finder . . . mainly because it is not a folder LOL  It is a drive.  This is a logical fault in your RAID so you are not going to easily see the problem.

You might be able to see the two drives in disk utilities (MacintoshHD->Applications->Utilities->Disk Utilities) if you want to use the graphical interface.  But I honestly can not remember what I saw in DiskUtilites because I just did everything via Terminal (I am just more comfortable in the Terminal than in a graphic environment when trying to see weird problems ;-) )

However, the easiest place to see if the drives are still being seen as two drives is by looking in your /Volumes folder from Terminal (MacintoshHD->Applications->Utilites->Terminal) and typing in:
cd /Volumes [return]
ls [return]
that will show you all of the logicial and physical volumes currently attached to your Mac.

I suspect you will still see two volumes "ExternalHD" and "ExternalHD 1" as well as your CD/DVD drive (if equipped and if you have CD/DVD in it) and your internal HD.

As long as you see more than one ExternalHD . . . your RAID has not completely repaired itself.

For me it did take about 36 - 48 hours for it to repair.  So be patient!!