External hard drive corrupted and then some

[Norouzi]

I'm at a loss for what's going on with an external hard drive I've been using for a Time Machine drive and I'm hoping others here might have some ideas.

I've been using a WD My Book for the past year as my Time Machine Drive. Everything has worked perfectly until this morning I got a message that the backup had failed because data could not be written to the drive (can't remember the exact message sorry.) So first thing I do is Verify the disk using Disk Utility. That comes up with multiple errors and when I try to repair the repair fails and I'm told to reformat the drive.
Ok, not a big deal it's a backup drive. So I format as I would any other drive and hit Verify again to make sure everything is OK. I get more errors mainly an "Unused node is not erased" error. After several formats with the same results I decided to try and Zero the data and perhaps that would help.

After a 5 hour format the drive still does not mount and now the drive shows as 2.2TB when it's only 1TB and will not format at all. I'm currently running a standard format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) where the time keeps going up. It started at Less than one minuet and is now at 35 minutes.

Is this drive just shot and I might as well give up or did I screw something up somehow and is there a way to fix it? Any help is appreciated.

Currently running a Mac Mini Mid 2010 on 10.6.5

 

[bmcgonag]

You might try booting from your install DVD, and see if you can format it from the Disk Utility on the install DVD without the main OS mounted.

Also, there is a utility called Disk Warrior, you'll want the latest version I'm sure, but it's a good utility for repairing, rebuilding, and so on with damaged data.

If all of that fails, then you have probably sunk enough time and effort into it, that you could just save money by replacing the drive.

Meantime, make sure to at least backup your important data / docs to something like dropbox, mozy, etc.

 

[Tumbleweed666]

Is this drive just shot and I might as well give up or did I screw something up somehow and is there a way to fix it? Any help is appreciated.

As new drives are cheap, and you are using this for backups, which when you need it, you really need it, why would you take the chance ?

 

[RedTomato]

Dead drive. It's at the final stages before failure. You're lucky you had advanced warning of it. I've had 3 drives go like this.

Options:

a) WD warranty return if you are still in the warranty.
b) Buy a new bare HDD, crack open the MyBook and replace the drive yourself. (look online for instructions).
c) Buy a new external drive.