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kg109 · Aug 29, 2006, 01:00 PM

Machine is a G5 on OSX 10.4.7.

I have an external hard drive that has been acting up the past few months (Western Digital 250GB Firewire Media Center). The drive sounds perfectly fine - it turns on and spins like it was new - no foul sounds at all (I've heard bad drives in the past). But sometimes it won't mount; sometimes...most of the time I can't write to it (lately it WILL allow files to be written to it, but it goes EXTREMELY slow). At times it will lock up my entire machine.

I recently bought another internal drive for my project files, and when I went to dump everything from the external drive to the new internal (about 90GB), it went reallllllllllllyyyyyy slow and started to copy some files, but the status bar said it was going to take days to complete, so I stopped it. But when I copied over 5 GB at a time (or even 15 toward the end) it moved the files just fine.

To troubleshoot, I grabbed another drive I had and threw it in the enclosure, which did not mount either, but it was a PC drive, so probably wasn't formatted correctly. I took the WD drive in question, and slaved it to my PC - the PC saw the drive in the Device Mgr., but the drive was not visible in the Windows Explorer. Again, not the best troubleshooting method.

So, I still have no idea if the drive is bad or not? I contacted WD and they said it was probably the OS, but I did not have time to research it further with them and have not been able to get another response out of them. I do believe this all has happened after I installed Tiger (but I can't see the OS being an issue).

Anyone ever experience this? More than likely I'll just buy a new Seagate today to put in that enclosure.

OreoCookie · Aug 29, 2006, 01:23 PM

Sounds like you have a few bad sectors on your drive. You may be able to remedy this by zeroing your drive (bad blocks will be remapped automatically), but on the other hand, this may not work. I would scan the surface of the drive with a suitable utility (e. g. DataRescue or TechTool Pro) and see if it complains about any bad blocks. Zero the drive and compare the result of this scan with the old one.

kg109 · Aug 29, 2006, 01:39 PM

Thanks for the info - I'll grab the new drive today while its still on sale, but I'll first run the diognostics and see what it comes up with.

As far as hard drives go, I'd rather spend the $100 on a new drive and count my lucky stars tha tI didn't loose any data - but if I can fix it, great.

I've had bad luck with hard drives - 2 blew up on me on my PC - and I've been a die-hard Mac user ever since.

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

Sounds like you have a few bad sectors on your drive. You may be able to remedy this by zeroing your drive (bad blocks will be remapped automatically), but on the other hand, this may not work. I would scan the surface of the drive with a suitable utility (e. g. DataRescue or TechTool Pro) and see if it complains about any bad blocks. Zero the drive and compare the result of this scan with the old one.

OreoCookie · Aug 29, 2006, 04:40 PM

Well, you have warranty on the drive for sure, so if you send it in (granted that there are problems with the drive, then it'll be replaced.

kg109 · Aug 29, 2006, 04:44 PM

I ran the serial number on WD's site - its out of warranty (I got it straight from WD through a friend in '03, so it was free anyway).

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

Well, you have warranty on the drive for sure, so if you send it in (granted that there are problems with the drive, then it'll be replaced.

kg109 · Aug 31, 2006, 12:12 AM

Update - STILL a problem!

I ran my drive through several tests via Disk Warrior and Techtool Pro. In TTPro, I did the scan for bad blocks, zero'd the data....everything. It PASSED all tests!

Now, the drive DOES mount everytime (before, at times it would not mount at all, or take a matter of minutes to mount on the desktop), BUT I still can't write to the drive..normally. It will accept file, but goes VERY slowly. Example, right now I'm trying to copy a 175MB file and its saying it'll take an hour!

So what on earth is going on? My only last guess is the firewire cable itself, but I really highly doubt that is the issue.

I have a new Seagate right here ready to throw in to replace it, and of course that would be a great way to test for a variable, but I don't want to open the drive 'til I know the existing drive is no good.

Should I just give up and install the Seagate? I'd just be really frustrated if I threw that Seagate in and found out that that drive wasn't working either due to some odd issue with the enclosure itself. But on the other hand, the files on this machine are the source of my living, and backing up my work on a dependable drive is worth every penny of that Seagate drive, but you get my point.

Thanks.

Originally Posted by kg109

Machine is a G5 on OSX 10.4.7.

I have an external hard drive that has been acting up the past few months (Western Digital 250GB Firewire Media Center). The drive sounds perfectly fine - it turns on and spins like it was new - no foul sounds at all (I've heard bad drives in the past). But sometimes it won't mount; sometimes...most of the time I can't write to it (lately it WILL allow files to be written to it, but it goes EXTREMELY slow). At times it will lock up my entire machine.

I recently bought another internal drive for my project files, and when I went to dump everything from the external drive to the new internal (about 90GB), it went reallllllllllllyyyyyy slow and started to copy some files, but the status bar said it was going to take days to complete, so I stopped it. But when I copied over 5 GB at a time (or even 15 toward the end) it moved the files just fine.

To troubleshoot, I grabbed another drive I had and threw it in the enclosure, which did not mount either, but it was a PC drive, so probably wasn't formatted correctly. I took the WD drive in question, and slaved it to my PC - the PC saw the drive in the Device Mgr., but the drive was not visible in the Windows Explorer. Again, not the best troubleshooting method.

So, I still have no idea if the drive is bad or not? I contacted WD and they said it was probably the OS, but I did not have time to research it further with them and have not been able to get another response out of them. I do believe this all has happened after I installed Tiger (but I can't see the OS being an issue).

Anyone ever experience this? More than likely I'll just buy a new Seagate today to put in that enclosure.

Tuoder · Aug 31, 2006, 03:10 AM

I am happy to hear that you have everything backed up. Is there another Mac that the drive could be tested on (thus eliminating the HDD as the problem)? Is there another HDD that could be tested in the enclosure (thus eliminating the enclosure as the pblom)?

kg109 · Aug 31, 2006, 08:36 AM

I took the setup to another G5 and it did the exact same thing - mounted, but very slowly accepted files.

I also threw in another drive into the enclosure, but the drive was out of a PC, so the formatting wasn't correct (as a result the Disk Utility saw the drive but it did not mount). So that didn't really clear up the variables.

Originally Posted by Tuoder

I am happy to hear that you have everything backed up. Is there another Mac that the drive could be tested on (thus eliminating the HDD as the problem)? Is there another HDD that could be tested in the enclosure (thus eliminating the enclosure as the pblom)?