External Hard Disk behaving erratically

[iMacZealot]

I bought a 500 GB LaCie d2 hard disk about a year ago to store FCP, my FCP projects, and all my raw video onto. I use it maybe a few times a week. The other day, I plugged it into my MacBook Pro, and it didn't make the usual spinning sound it makes-- instead, it was this lower pitch, dying-like sound that it kept repeating. Today, it didn't even mount onto my computer, so my assumption is that it's dying. What can I do to save my 350GB+ on this disk? And can you recommend a good disk to buy to replace it?

Thanks-- I haven't been on here in a while and I always prefer MR help to other websites.

 

[AeroStud1026]

I bought a 500 GB LaCie d2 hard disk about a year ago to store FCP, my FCP projects, and all my raw video onto. I use it maybe a few times a week. The other day, I plugged it into my MacBook Pro, and it didn't make the usual spinning sound it makes-- instead, it was this lower pitch, dying-like sound that it kept repeating. Today, it didn't even mount onto my computer, so my assumption is that it's dying. What can I do to save my 350GB+ on this disk? And can you recommend a good disk to buy to replace it?

Thanks-- I haven't been on here in a while and I always prefer MR help to other websites.

Western Digital makes excellent products, I've had a WD 1TB External HD for over a year and it's worked flawlessly so far.

As far as saving your data....did you do a hard reset on the drive? Pulling the power source and letting it sit for 15mins or so. Then plug it back into the power source then into your MB, see if that might help..if you can get it mounted you can just drag and drop to the new external or run Carbon Copy Cloner which will make an exact copy of your external to the new external however most people use that when they are copying internal HD's as CCC makes a bootable copy of your HD.

Other than that, i'm not sure. I'm sure someone will chime in and offer additional support.

 

[iMacZealot]

I have let it sit for a while. Does pulling the power chord do anything different?

One thing I did the other day was I set it to 'auto on'-- could that have sparked that problem?

 

[AeroStud1026]

I have let it sit for a while. Does pulling the power chord do anything different?

One thing I did the other day was I set it to 'auto on'-- could that have sparked that problem?

Even while the HD appears to be off when unmounted and unplugged from your MB it's still having power feeding to it, keeping its learned parameters intact, disconnecting the power source and re plugging it in forces the HD to do a full reboot.

And im not quite sure about the auto on. I've seen HD's live forever or fail in 2 weeks...it's really hard to say.

 

[iMacZealot]

Hmm...I suppose it's probably not too healthy when I've kept it plugged into a wall for almost all of its lifetime. Of course, the clicking sounds it's been making in the last two days really sounds like it's on its deathbed.

 

[iMacZealot]

So, I left it unplugged for 14 hours or so, then connected it to my computer as I started it up. Today, it makes an even fainter, quieter clicking noise. My computer did not recognize it.

Is my data lost at this point, or is there any way I can save some of it?

 

[AeroStud1026]

So, I left it unplugged for 14 hours or so, then connected it to my computer as I started it up. Today, it makes an even fainter, quieter clicking noise. My computer did not recognize it.

Is my data lost at this point, or is there any way I can save some of it?

I'm not sure at this point, I would venture to say if you can't get the drive mounted then yes its lost. is it Mac formatted? I know some drives come FAT32 that Apple/Windows can both read and write to. If it is FAT32 you can try plugging it into a windows computer to see if windows might pick it up.

Also does it show up in Disk Utility? If it doesn't then that's a very good indicator that the drive failed.