Knackered External HD

Rhisiart

Rhisiart

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I have a Firewire external hard drive. Just recently I have had difficulty copying files to it (for back-up purposes). The copying slows down to a crawl and then freezes.

I stupidly ran it though Norton Disc Doctor a while back and I wonder whther the directory is damaged. I have run Alsoft's DiskWarrior but to no effect.

Does anyone have any suggestions?
 
rhisiart said:
I have a Firewire external hard drive. Just recently I have had difficulty copying files to it (for back-up purposes). The copying slows down to a crawl and then freezes.

I stupidly ran it though Norton Disc Doctor a while back and I wonder whther the directory is damaged. I have run Alsoft's DiskWarrior but to no effect.

Does anyone have any suggestions?
Click to expand...

I would back up the files on the drive and erase/format it. You could also try repairing disk and permissions.
 
The Ghost.

Thanks. I have tried that but again no success. I wonder whther it is a USB connection problem?
 
rhisiart said:
The Ghost.

Thanks. I have tried that but again no success. I wonder whther it is a USB connection problem?
Click to expand...

You are welcome. Is it a firewire/USB drive? Regardless, I doubt that the firewire/USB ports are the problem. And, you apparently are saying that you could not repair disk or permissions and could not erase the drive. Did the problem coincide with your update to 10.3.9 or any other OS upgrade? In this regard, you might need to update the drive's firmware. And, perhaps the drive is failing? Have you tried starting up with your install CD/DVD #1 in order to repair disk and permissions or erase?
 
The Ghost,

I got mixed up there a little. There are no USB connections involved.

The external Hard Drive uses a Firewire connection into the back of the G4. Now that I recall, the external HD started going weird about the time I fitted an iSight camera connection into the second Firewire port.

I just unplugged the iSight lead and the external HD worked fine. When I put the camera lead back in, the external HD stopped functioning again.

Strange.
 
Is the iSight powered by a seperate power adapter?
i'm thinking maybe a voltage drop across the Firewire ports...
 
Yesterday I was compressing a ripped dvd from an external FW drive to my MacHD when all of a sudden the process stopped before finishing. On checking my system, I found that the FW HD had disappeared from the desktop. Using System Profiler, I saw that the external casing was listed, but the drive was listed as an "unknown device". Could this mean that the drive is fried? I am unable to mount the drive as it is not recognized by Disk Utility. Does anyone have any suggestions? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
rhisiart, If it does work without the iSight plugged in, I would suggest getting a seperately powered Firewire hub and plugging it into one of the Firewire ports, plug the iSight into it and the drive into the other on-computer Firewire port. This will also give you room to add more Firewire devices in the future.
P.S. - Just make sure that if the hub says seperately powered that it comes with a adapter... My USB hub said that and didnt come with a power adapter...

jamerican, Do any programs like DiskWarrior regcognize the drive? If they do I would run their repair operations on the drive. Also make sure that the drive did not get too hot. If it's on and you hear loud clicking noises when the hard drive stops, chances are it is dying. P.S. - A grinding sound is normal.
 
Hey riccbhard. No programs have recognized the drive. I even took it to another Mac and got the same no-show, so I know it's not the G5. All my other peripherals are working fine, so it looks as if the drive has failed. I am going to put it in another enclosure to see if it is a problem with the enclosure itself.
 
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