My External Hard Drive has stopped responding

[Blitz24]

Been using a Western Digital my passport 500 GB External HD for mac on my Mac Book Pro laptop.

Today, after 3 years of usage, it was not recognized by time machine to back up my data. I knew that the EHDD was full, but it usually would just delete the oldest back up.

Apparently not today. The computer did not recognize the disk even existed. I went into disk utility, tried to mount the partition.... received a disk error. I cannot even access the disk to restore or erase the partition.

At this point I just want to be able to keep using the disk as I assume it can still be used as an external back up disk, but I need to delete the partition which I cannot mount in order to delete it (at least through disk utility).

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[BobK]

It's dead, Jim.

Seriously, if the system can't recognize any partitions (I'm assuming it can still see the drive itself?) then odds are it's got some flaw that's not going to go away. Unless you really have to recover some data off it, I wouldn't bother messing with it.

 

[Grayfox]

Try removing the USB to SATA board and plugging in directly inside your machine
If it still spins up and SMART cant find any real issues you may beable to recover the data.

Using any proper data recovery program will take a long time, the larger the drive size the longer it will take to run the scan.

If the drive has any surface damage(ie Bad Sectors) it will take even longer.

 

[Blitz24]

Seriously, if the system can't recognize any partitions (I'm assuming it can still see the drive itself?) then odds are it's got some flaw that's not going to go away. Unless you really have to recover some data off it, I wouldn't bother messing with it.

It can see the device if I open disk utility. I get a run around though if I try to access it there.

- Try to mount it, tells me it's damaged, to run first aid.
- Run first aid, tells me it cannot mount it, delete or restore the partition.
- Partition cannot be mounted.
- Drive cannot be ejected.

 

[Grayfox]

Try a data recovery program like Get Data Back
http://download.runtime.org/gdbnt.zip
It is a trial but it will tell you whether you can access it and even attempt to recover files off the drive.

Use the following option
I don't know use default settings

Select your drive
Drives will be listed in <1st> HDD<size> [HD13x]

On the right click on See Currrent Options
click on change options and set to the following

Excessive Search
Recover Deleted Files
Allow Duplicate File names
Recover Lost files
Skip Bad Blocks

Make sure the following are not checked
Use Valid MFT
Use Quick Scan
Retry Each Sector.

Let the scan run and it will take a fair bit of time depending on the size of the drive.

I use get data back to recover files and it is is a pretty powerful tool
There is a trick to getting your files back with the trial version that does not involve cracking or hacking, but I will not mention how to do this.

 

[Blitz24]

Try a data recovery program like Get Data Back
http://download.runtime.org/gdbnt.zip
It is a trial but it will tell you whether you can access it and even attempt to recover files off the drive.

Use the following option
I don't know use default settings

Select your drive
Drives will be listed in <1st> HDD<size> [HD13x]

On the right click on See Currrent Options
click on change options and set to the following

Excessive Search
Recover Deleted Files
Allow Duplicate File names
Recover Lost files
Skip Bad Blocks

Make sure the following are not checked
Use Valid MFT
Use Quick Scan
Retry Each Sector.

Let the scan run and it will take a fair bit of time depending on the size of the drive.

I use get data back to recover files and it is is a pretty powerful tool
There is a trick to getting your files back with the trial version that does not involve cracking or hacking, but I will not mention how to do this.

Since it's a backup drive used to store data off my laptop, it merely has served as something that I would only need to access if my laptop suddenly decided to fall off the face of the earth. I would rather wipe the entire drive and restart as opposed to continue using it as is. I don't need to recover files.

 

[Grayfox]

Since it's a backup drive used to store data off my laptop, it merely has served as something that I would only need to access if my laptop suddenly decided to fall off the face of the earth. I would rather wipe the entire drive and restart as opposed to continue using it as is. I don't need to recover files.

I would run a Full Check disk on it and use the surface scan flag.

Command is as follows.

chkdsk /b

Check Disk will scan the entire drive, clear the badsector file list and recheck for any bad sectors.
It will inform you if there are any bad sectors at the end.

Also run a SMART Test.

I personally do not trust any HDD that drops a file system for no reason.
If you unmount correctly or did not have a power failure to cause this.

Some thing might be going wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.#Known_ATA_S.M.A.R.T._attributes

These are the common signs of a dying drive

Reallicated Sector Count you want 0
Spin Retry Count you want 0
Temperature you do not want this to be above 50C or ever exceed it(you will get a message if it ever has(as a past failure))
Current Pending Sector Count you want 0
Uncorrectable Sector Count you want 0

I use Disk Check Up from Passmark to monitor my drives
It is free and I have made it start up on boot.

http://www.passmark.com.au/products/diskcheckup.htm

 

[BobK]

I would run a Full Check disk on it and use the surface scan flag.

Command is as follows.

chkdsk /b

Pretty sure that won't work well on a Mac Book Pro laptop.

There is a unix utility called fsck, not sure if Macs have that available or not; it does pretty much the same thing as chkdsk.

In any case yeah try to check it out with some sort of utility, but odds are the drive is toast.

This is assuming it hadn't been improperly disconnected of course.

 

[Blitz24]

Pretty sure that won't work well on a Mac Book Pro laptop.

There is a unix utility called fsck, not sure if Macs have that available or not; it does pretty much the same thing as chkdsk.

In any case yeah try to check it out with some sort of utility, but odds are the drive is toast.

This is assuming it hadn't been improperly disconnected of course.

I'm more surprised that the drive kept backing up more and more information for no real reason. The data backup went from 2 GB to a staggering 45 GB required to be backed up over the past month.

 

[sesselpupser]

There is a unix utility called fsck, not sure if Macs have that available or not; it does pretty much the same thing as chkdsk.

They do, Disk Utility (which is what @Blitz24 was using anyway) is a GUI for it. It could probably do a few things Disk Utils can't but given that Disk Utils can't even begin to scan the drive I'd be surprised if fsck could help. Maybe it could, though, I don't know unix that well.

I'm more surprised that the drive kept backing up more and more information for no real reason. The data backup went from 2 GB to a staggering 45 GB required to be backed up over the past month.

Time Machine keeps incremental backups so if you set it to only back up one 2GB folder (for example) and then made 45GB of edits and file moves to and from the folder over a period of time between backups, the Time Machine backup would grow to 45GB. I'm pretty sure if you don't edit any files they won't be backed up again (an alias, aka shortcut, is used instead) but if you change even a single byte of a file it'll copy the whole thing all over again. It's so you can jump back to any point in time to grab a specific version of a file or folder, I haven't found much use for it but it's nice to know it's there.

As for your hard drive, I had a very similar problem with a Buffalo drive. The drive itself was fine (but very, very corrupt - it still worked, however, after a format), the USB to SATA interface board was dead as dead can be, though.

 

[Blitz24]

They do, Disk Utility (which is what @Blitz24 was using anyway) is a GUI for it. It could probably do a few things Disk Utils can't but given that Disk Utils can't even begin to scan the drive I'd be surprised if fsck could help. Maybe it could, though, I don't know unix that well.



Time Machine keeps incremental backups so if you set it to only back up one 2GB folder (for example) and then made 45GB of edits and file moves to and from the folder over a period of time between backups, the Time Machine backup would grow to 45GB. I'm pretty sure if you don't edit any files they won't be backed up again (an alias, aka shortcut, is used instead) but if you change even a single byte of a file it'll copy the whole thing all over again. It's so you can jump back to any point in time to grab a specific version of a file or folder, I haven't found much use for it but it's nice to know it's there.

As for your hard drive, I had a very similar problem with a Buffalo drive. The drive itself was fine (but very, very corrupt - it still worked, however, after a format), the USB to SATA interface board was dead as dead can be, though.

I'm wondering if it was going and backing up my virtual drives, which I did not NEED backed up.

 

[sesselpupser]

I'm wondering if it was going and backing up my virtual drives, which I did not NEED backed up.

Well, if it was you can tell it not to, I think. I wouldn't remember how, it's in the System Preferences Time Machine pane somewhere.

 

[Grayfox]

Macs have one.

It is called Disk Utility.

But I have not really used a mac to know if there are any ways to make it surface scan for bad sectors, or if there is a good SMART utility for a mac.

 

[Blitz24]

Macs have one.

It is called Disk Utility.

But I have not really used a mac to know if there are any ways to make it surface scan for bad sectors, or if there is a good SMART utility for a mac.

I tried Disk Utility.

It kept running in circles.

Windows didn't recognize it. I had a friend look at it and he told me that either the controller is faulty or the drive itself is kaput. Seeing as it was merely a backup drive and it makes no sense to spend $90 to repair it, I will just buy a 1 TB EHDD for ~$70.

Thank you all for your help.

 

[TenEightyOne]

I'm wondering if it was going and backing up my virtual drives, which I did not NEED backed up.

Don't re-use the drive, it sounds like a head/plate issue. The controller is visible and reporting but when mount actions occur they cannot conclude. I suspect that the 45Gb backup was because of the way most backups work; they compare the index of their already-filed stuff to the source index (in this case your computer). If the backup driver reports and empty filetable then by default all the data in your computer's "watch" area will be on the backup list.

Be glad you have a sensible backup system in place, make a new drive quick, destroy the old one.

 

[Blitz24]

Don't re-use the drive, it sounds like a head/plate issue. The controller is visible and reporting but when mount actions occur they cannot conclude. I suspect that the 45Gb backup was because of the way most backups work; they compare the index of their already-filed stuff to the source index (in this case your computer). If the backup driver reports and empty filetable then by default all the data in your computer's "watch" area will be on the backup list.

Be glad you have a sensible backup system in place, make a new drive quick, destroy the old one.

The sad thing is that Time Machine on my Mac is made too simple. It's impossible to figure out what exactly is being backed up.