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seagate portable harddrive failure

1rottenapple

1rottenapple

macrumors 603
Original poster
Ok so I bought a seagate portable harddrive for about 70 at staples last month to hold and stream my media library (videos only) to watch on my MB Air. Basically, the HD was attached via usb drive and played videos. The problem is the HD basically failed in less than 3 weeks. Now it does not mount 90% of the time. The other 5% it would mount, however it would make a ticking sound, and the rest of the 5%, it mounts and I can pull videos onto my Air's main HD, but it usually fails after a few Gigs of transfer video.

My question,
Are portable Harddrives not meant to stream data like watching videos? I have a custom 60gb portable HD that used my old Ibook 60gb HD and I've had that for years and never experience any issues. In fact I still have it and use it to back up my Air.
 
Hard drives fail sometimes, it usually happens very early or very late in the lifetime of the device. But in your case, I think its either a power adapter/converter problem, or the drive controller is failing. That means, the actual hard drive inside the enclosure is functioning fine, otherwise you wouldnt be able to mount it at all. If its under warranty, backup the data if possible and get it replaced.
 
You need to pull the drive to make sure it's not the controller that's failed. In my experience, USB controllers fail more often than hard drives do, especially those from Seagate.
 
You had better go through their support system for this. Let them know you have critical information on that drive and that you need to retrieve it (and pose the question if they can help diagnose the controller or the drive).
 
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