Hardware :: How Long External Hard Disk Usually Last

Jan 2, 2009

I've bought three over the last two years, and only one of them has lasted longer than 18 months. I think one of them may have been damaged in a fifteen hour flight, but it still works (albeit too slow to the point that it's unusuable.) My .5 TB monster just died last week, which had almost all of my video files from the last year, totaling 300 GB in data loss. What can I do to avoid such situations? Should I maybe get a 1 TB disk for everyday use to replace my .5 TB disk, then a 2.5 TB disk (or bigger) just for backups? What sort of backup software should I use? (not Time Machine, I'm not interested in backing up my entire computer several times, just my FCP files.) How long do external hard disks last for you?

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OS X V10.7 Lion :: Disk Utility Can't Repair Disk (1 Partition) On External Hard Drive

Apr 24, 2012

I have a 2TB Western Digital My Book Studio FW800 external that has 5 partitions, connected to my 2011 iMac. I had help doing the partitions and don't really remember the reasoning, but one is just for my SuperDuper! backup, one is Miscellaneous, one for movie clips off my camcorder, one for misc scanned photo's and one for my genealogy research. I back up using Time Machine to a Time Capsule and also to this WD hard drive with SuperDuper! 

Recently I'm getting a pop up message that "Mac OS X can't repair the disk "Genealogy"'.  And it needs to be reformatted.  It's become a read only disk.  When I look in Disk Utility it shows all the partitions as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" EXCEPT for the one in question.  I also noticed that there are a lot of files with "date created" being the same date in 1969!  These files may be letters I've written or photo's I added to that partition within the last few years. 

I think I have to completely reformat the entire external hard drive to repair this, but I want to make sure.  Because it's going to be a major hassle backing it all up to another external (having to get one first) and then figuring out how to make the files that have turned "read only" in that one partition, back to their original state!  Does this sound right, that I have to reformat the entire external hard drive?  And how do I get the read-only files back to their original state.

Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

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OS X Leopard :: Disk Write Cache Corruption On External Hard Disk?

Feb 15, 2011

Recently I purchased an external hard disk, to put all of my pictures of my baby due to space limitations on my internal laptop drive. Since my Canon camera 10 megapixel pictures take up a ton of space this was occurring at an alarming rate. My intention was also to back up to DVD but never got to it. This is both a comment and a question.

Now said baby, is getting really good at pulling cords etc. He managed to do this on the external drive firewire cable. As far as i know the drive was not in the process of actually writing. However, after a few minutes and trying to re-plug the drive the OS crashed with a Grey Screen of Death hardware error that tells you that you need to push the power button..

This apparently corrupted the drive's directory. Upon reboot the drive would not mount. Since there were time machine backups on the drive too Diskwarrior was not able to reconstruct the drive in the built in memory available on the computer. Time machine stores millions of files and Diskwarrior apparently wants to keep it all in memory at once. Since my computer has 2GB you would hope that would be enough but apparently not. So that failed. Other utilities seemed to be able to find the files but not restore the directory. I also took it to the apple store they were not able to recover it.

I have to say this is extremely distressing, and hard to believe that a simple accident like this could cost the loss of thousands of pictures. I did send it to a rescue company but that was expensive but I think apple needs to do something about this situation.

On Windows there is a way to disable the write cache for external drives. This is not available for Mac OS X. This would prevent this rather common occurrence of a plug accidentally becoming disengaged when the drive is not in the process of writing. This reduces the odds but I still think apple, in order to become clearly superior, needs a better solution.

I know Apple has experimented with ZFS would this not eliminate this possibility of this kind of disaster? Is this in Snow Leopard desktop? I know they are thinking this is a business customer focused technology but clearly if it can eliminate this kind of thing then I think it is extremely useful to their non server customers. Perhaps there are other ways of dealing with this issue but ZFS is designed to deal with these issues. HFS+ is extremely fragile to disk corruption.

I know my situation is not that uncommon and this is not the first time this has happened to me with an external drive. You would think I had learned. I hate to think of how many other people have had the same thing happen to them.

Information:
MacBook Pro
Mac OS X (10.5.8)

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MacBook Pro :: Unable To Check External Hard Disk / Cannot Find The Disk

Feb 15, 2011

I've download a Seagate Diagnostics programme to check whether my external Seagate FreeAgent Desk is working properly or not. However, when I run the programme, it indicates that cannot find the disk.

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MacBook Pro :: External Hard Drive - Disk Utility Can't Repair Disk

Jun 27, 2014

I have a Seagate 1 TB Backup Plus Drive which was working perfectly fine until I plugged it into a USB hub. It detected it while in the hub and I was able to get files off of it, but when I ejected it from the hub and put it back into the USB slot on the computer it was not detected by finder. It shows up in the disk utility and I clicked verify and repair and it says:

Verify and Repair volume “Seagate Backup Plus Drive”
Checking file system
Volume repair complete.
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.

Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files. 

Is there any way to get this to work properly again? Or if not is there a way for me to recover my files on the external hard drive? 

I have a Macbook PRO late 2011 running OS X Mavericks.

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OS X :: Disk Utility Screwed Up External USB Hard Disk

Aug 6, 2010

I have an external 500GB Freecom USB HDD with two Data partitions on it (FAT32 and NTFS). With a Windows tool, I made the two partitions smaller in order to free up some space (ca. 200GB) for an additional Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition. This partition I wanted to create with the Mac OSX 10.6.4 Disk Utility. When I pluged in my USB HDD in my new iMac it mounted the two partitions, NTFS and EXT32 and the Disk Utility tool also showed the free (unpartitioned, almost 200GB) space on the HDD. Then, I chose to create a new Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition and let the tool do it. ...which I probably shouldn't have done. Disk utility stopped and showed an error message saying that it cannot read the partitions anymore and that it needs to be closed. No partitions can be mounted anymore since then on this HDD. Here is the logfile entry of Disk Utility (unfortunately, it's in German):............

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Intel Mac :: External Hard Disks Not Visible On The Hard Disk

Jan 31, 2012

I've connected my new Iomega Minimax with a firewire cable directly to my iMAc but nothing appears on my desktop.

Info:
iMac

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OS X :: Unable To Partition External Hard Disk - How To Fix It

Sep 28, 2009

My intention is to partition an external HD in half allowing it to serve as a backup for a pc running windows xp, and the other half as a backup for a mac(10.5. I am using a Seagate external HD(new) that was initially partitioned on a windows xp computer.

The 1st half of the 1TB HD was formatted in NTFS format, and the second half was erased and (I thought) reformatted in HFS plus but when I attempt to use CCC(Carbon Copy) to copy the mac 1/2 of the hard drive, I get this message:

"You may have difficulty booting from this target volume, the underlying disk is not formatted with a partitioning scheme that Apple recommends for Intel Macs."

I have read the recommendations that the external HD need to be partitioned with APM or GPT, but I cannot seem to get to that option now for the mac side of the external HD.

In the Disk Utility, the external HD shows both sections of the partitioned drive(the xp section and the leopard). I do not want to reformat the entire drive(both sections) if at all possible.

I just want the Mac side of the ext drive to be properly prepared for CCC, and the windows side to remain as is.

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Hardware :: AEBS - Which External Hard Disk To Get

Jan 12, 2010

I want to get an external hard drive for my Airport Extreme, in the range 1tb (maybe 1.5tb but likely 1tb). Google reveals some people have had problems with particular drives so I thought I would ask which drives work well so I can just avoid any problems in the first place?

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OS X :: External Hard Drives And Disk Utility

May 25, 2010

My external hard drive has been corrupted and the error message is telling me to reformat it. However, through all the research I have done to find out how, everything I've found has told me to use Disk Utility to just erase everything on the disk to do this. When I try to do this, it tells me that I can't erase anything because the disk cannot be unnmounted. What should I do?

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OS X :: Lost All Data On External Hard Disk

Jun 17, 2010

I had a WD external hard disk which I was using on my pc but not any more since I'm not a PC user any more. However, I'm a mac user now but when I connected my WD external hard disk I found out that I have lost everything on it. I thought may be because of my mac so I connected on my PC again and i have not seen any file which means I lost everything. Give me any software on mac that will get everything that I have lost.

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OS X V10.7 Lion :: How To Download It To External Hard Disk

Feb 14, 2012

I need to download Lion from Apple Store to an external Hard Drive and make it bootable. Where can I find step by step procedure?

Info:
Mac Pro (Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.7.3), Mac Book Pro 2.6, 2006, iCloud

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Mac Pro :: External Hard Disk Mounts Again After Unmount?

Apr 14, 2012

My Mac Pro [with 4 internal disks, 2 External Disks (Sata Raid 0), and several external FireWire disks and a Voyager disk station] has a little problem with letting externals go Since a few weeks I have a problem with unmounting my externals. After unmount, the unmounted disk will mount again immediately.No time to disconnect cables and/or power. Hinders disk management, backup, and simple disconnecting disks. It only happens with disks (FireWire 400/800/ SATA and USB alike). USB sticks work fine.

Info:
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

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MacBook Pro :: Format An External Hard Disk For Mac?

Apr 28, 2012

I have format an External Hard disk for Mac.  Can you advise how to format back to FAT32 format for Window

Info:
MacBook
Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

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OS X V10.7 Lion :: Indexing Of An External Hard Disk?

Apr 30, 2012

I am unable to find any results in spot light search from my external hard disk. is there any way to index the files on my external hard disk? 

Info:
MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.3)

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OS X V10.7 Lion :: How To Reformat An External Hard Disk

May 11, 2012

How do I reformat a USB external drive with two partitions one of which is corrupted.

Disk Utility will not work because the faulty partition prevents unmounting of the disk.

Info:
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.4), Macbook Air bought August 2011

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MacBook Pro :: Transcend External Hard Disk

Jun 12, 2012

I recently acquired a MAC book Pro and this being my first APPLE product - I am still learning lots abt this notebook. My question pertains to using an external hard disk in the MAC book Pro. I have a transcend external hard drive that works on the mac book pro - without my having formatted it etc. It also works on a windows system. ( I have as yet only used it to access documents that were previosly stored in the external hard disk) Can I continue using the hard disk as -is or would I still need to format the disk to make it MAC book pro friendl

Info:
MacBook Pro

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MacBook Pro :: How To Format External Hard Disk

Aug 28, 2014

How do i format an external hard disk for my Mac Book Pro

Info:
MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)

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MacBook Air :: How To Connect External Hard Disk

Aug 31, 2014

After going to disk utility it refuses to repair disk. recently I have updated my Operating System. After that I am not able to connect my hard disk.

Info:
MacBook Air, Software OS X 10.9.4 (13E28)

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OS X :: Lost Everything From External Hard Disk / Recover Using Software?

Feb 15, 2011

I had a WD external hard disk which I was using on my pc but not any more since I'm not a pc user any more. However, I'm a mac user now but when I connected my WD external hard disk I found out that i have lost everything on it. I thought may be because of my mac so I connected on my pc again and i have not seen any file which means I lost everything. Give me any software on mac that will get everything that I have lost. It's really important to me.

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MacBook :: Unable To Copy Iso's To External Hard Disk?

Mar 30, 2010

I'm using a macbook and would like to copy over several games over to my friend's external harddrive. The files are rather large -8gigs, 6gigs, 4gigs.

For some reason it wont allow me to copy the files to the HD. only prompting me with the message "the operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code 0)".

I presume that it's formatted correctly because I was able to copy a smaller file (363megs) without any troubles. However, whenever it involves these large torrents it prompts me with that same message.

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MacBook Air :: Transfer Photos To An External Hard Disk?

May 8, 2012

how can i transfer photos to an external hard disk?

Info:
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

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MacBook :: Cannot Copy Files From Hard Disk To The External HD

Jun 9, 2012

I have an external HD where I back up data from other Window laptop. when I connect this HD to Macbook, it is available as read only. I cannot copy files from my MacBook Hard disk to the external HD.

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OS X V10.7 Lion :: Manually Put An External Hard Disk To Sleep?

Jun 25, 2012

Is it possible to manually put an external hard disk to sleep? Right now, I've already got "Put the hard disks to sleep when possible" checkmarked in the Energy Saver preference pane, and so they should sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity, but I'm wondering if it's also possible to do this manually whenever I want. 

I just bought an external hard drive and it's already spinning constantly, compared to my current external which is completely quiet, so I'm wondering if I can put it to sleep when I need to to stop it from spinning all the time.

Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 3.2 GHz Intel Core i3, 16 GB RAM

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OS X Mavericks :: Can't View Or Read External Hard Disk?

Jun 2, 2014

I reinstalled Mavericks 10.9.3 and now I can't view or read my external hard disk.

Info:
iMac (27-inch Mid 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)

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MacBook Pro :: Format Only One Partition On External Hard Disk?

Sep 12, 2014

I have partitioned my external Hard drive into three different partitions, each of different formats. Two partitions for backing up my macbooks and one to copy to and from my windows PC. I would just like to know if in any way is it possible for me to be able to re-partition one of the partitions, without affecting my Time machine partitions, in case the need be in future.

Info:
MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)

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Hardware :: How To Transfer Iphoto Contents To External Hard Disk

Jul 30, 2009

My G5 is completely full. Can I transfer my iphoto contents to an external HD? Using Time Machine won't help because it only backs up my photos so I can't add more to my iphoto library.

Or, is there a way to make iphoto an external HD application so the photos are only stored ion the external HD?

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OS X Leopard :: Copy Data From System To External Hard Disk?

Feb 15, 2011

i need to copy data from MAc to my external hard disk, con'n can copy but iam administrator on the computer

Information:
Mac OS X (10.5.6)

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OS X :: External Hard Drive And Disk Utility Erase Options

Oct 17, 2010

I have an external hard drive that was used on a PC. I want to use it on a Mac. I went into disk utility and did an erase. (Extended Journaled and in security options changed it to zero out data). I can now use it on the Mac how ever it is telling me that there is 54.1 MB of used space. I want to have access to this. How do I do it?

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OS X :: Delete Photos In Underlying External Hard Disk And Iphoto?

Jan 24, 2010

I know this is a reoccurring question, but I haven't found the answer to this specific flavour of it, so I hope you can help. I'm using iphoto 09. After initially using it with default setup, I've now unticked the 'Copy items to the iphoto library' in preferences.I've got an external (NAS, one that is plugged in the router) harddrive with all my photos on it. I didn't want to pull them into a library on my mac, and putting the iphoto library onto the NAS drive didn't work either (it wouldn't load the thumbnails). So I've decided to leave the photos where they are and point iphoto to them without importing them (by unticking that box I mentioned, which was described in another post). Deleting however is a problem. Ideally I would hope I can delete a photo in iphoto and it would be deleted on the NAS drive as well. I've read all the posts about deleting and then emptying the iphoto trash, which I did. I pressed all sorts of keys when deleting (cmd, alt, ctrl, shift etc. - didn't work either.

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