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I bought a Mac Book Pro 6 from a liquidation auction sale. All was working fine until I went to add a drive to it to use as a backup. The Mac keeps disconnecting the drive so I can’t copy anything to or from a USB storage device. The USB ports work as I have a mouse and keyboard plugged in. On contacting the company their sales conditions were sold as seen so they couldn’t help, even though I have a receipt of sale. I have read that there may be a firmware password enabled, but I can’t find anything on the Mac to disable it. How can I check if there is a password and is there a way I can reset the password, or if I can’t is there a work around where I can attach a drive to use as a Time Machine back up device? Thank you.
A firmware password wouldn’t be your issue if you are able to boot up to the systems desktop. Sounds like you have a power or USB port issue or the company might have applied a rule to the active Users ID so the ports are disabled. Open up the System Preferences at the bottom locate the Users & Groups control panel what does the Current User have of system privileges? Admin or Standard. Review the log files as well for a clue and lastly run the onboard diagnostics using the startup D key Reference: Mac startup key combinations
