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    External HD Problem

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by dbam987, Jul 1, 2011.

  1. dbam987

    dbam987 wicked-poster

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    Hey all, I'm having a problem with my external HD that I use for performing Time Machine backups of my MBP with. It's a Seagate 1 TB drive, that hooks in using USB (and is powered by USB too). What happened is that Time Machine now reports that it couldn't do a backup, and suggested to repair the drive with Disk Utility. When I tried the repair operation, it said that it couldn't repair the disk and suggested that the drive be formatted.

    So I think I lost the backups that I have done with the drive, and decided that I'll just format and re-do the backup from scratch. Here's where things get dicey... disk utility seemingly can't wipe the drive, staying at the "unmounting..." status for what seems an eternity. Any ideas on how I can repair the drive? It's relatively new still, at about a year old. Do you think if I use it on a Windows machine, that a format will "fix" the drive?

    I'm glad I have Drop Box for the critical files...
     
    dbam987, Jul 1, 2011
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  2. dbam987

    dbam987 wicked-poster

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    I think I got it working again... though my reliance on the drive is now a bit shaky. I deleted just the partition, which worked relatively quick. Afterwards I did the full format and am now running a full TM backup.
     
    dbam987, Jul 1, 2011
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  3. kornchild2002

    kornchild2002 Notebook Deity

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    Hard drives do fail over time and, in my experience, the portable ones that are USB powered tend to fail (and have issues) quicker than the ones that aren't portable and stay stationary. So I wouldn't put too much faith in that drive and it might not be a bad idea to purchase a new non-portable one that only ever sits there and is your Tme Machine backup.

    I have gone through about 5 portable USB powered hard drives over the years: two Western Digital, one Seagate, one Momentus (or something like that), and one HP branded model (it came with my HP netbook in 2009 and I thin it was a Western Digital). The one that pushed the longest was a 500GB Western Digital from back in 2009 and it is still going though I am beginning to have problems with it.
     
    kornchild2002, Jul 2, 2011
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  4. dbam987

    dbam987 wicked-poster

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    Yeah I agree about not relying on the drive for backups. For the time being, I'll use it for full system backups but keep my important files also in Drop Box just in case. Cloud storage FTW.
     
    dbam987, Jul 2, 2011
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