[Scottsh]

Hey Everyone,

I have been running a LaCie 250GB d2 Hard Drive Extreme external hard drive connected to Airport Extreme as a network disk and everything seemed to be fine until I upgraded my iBook G4 to 10.5.1. I am also running a MacBook Air which is now fully up to date with 10.5.2. Neither machine can access the drive through Airport or directly connected vis USB.

I have done everything short of swapping the HD case or bringing the drive to a disk repair specialist. Below are some of the things I have tried:
• Disk Utility, Disk Warrior, Data Rescue 2, FileSalvage
• System Profiler - check USB
• Swap cable
• Mounted a friends USB drive, worked fine
• Zapped Pram etc.
• Booted to Install disk, no external drive
• Spent an hour with Apple Tech Support trying all the same things, no luck
• Probably a few things I can't remember at this point

It's obvious that the drive has issues and both macs seem to be fine. From what I can gather reading various posts most people seem to think the problem might have stemmed from the host computer that the drive is mounted to going to sleep or being shut down without ejecting the drive first thus damaging the file tree or something like that. I'm not using Time Machine so I don't think any of the drive issues surrounding that are related, but maybe?

When I spoke with Apple Tech support they had no record of anyone filing a complaint along these lines, although it seemed I read a few posts where people had mentioned they reported the situation to Apple. I can verify that I have now filed a report directly with an Apple Tech person named Paul on Sunday 4/27/08 at apprx. 2pm.

At this point, I'm kinda ranting since I'm a bit frustrated and of course I don't want to loose my data! I'm not sure if I should try replacing the case or just take the drive to a disk specialist. Anyone have any other suggestions?

I guess I'm mainly just curious to know if this problem is going to occur again if I get the drive fixed or replace it with a new one. I mean, it's quite possible the drive may be bad, but it seems many have had similar problems.

Any comments or advise would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Scott

[Nivag]

Is it a USB drive only? From what I know of these drives it has at least Firewire as well, can you try that?

Otherwise it should only be one hard drive inside the casing, so you should be able to take it out and put it in another casing and see if that works. I've seen a few Lacie drives fail and once the HD is in another unit it works fine. Good luck

[Scottsh]

Yes, it supports both Firewire and USB. I've tried the both connections and neither seems to make a difference.

I guess I should give dropping the drive into a new case a try.