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External hard drive failing! Urgent! Please help!

D

demonbabies

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 3, 2011
5
0
Los Angeles, Ca
My WD ELEMENTS 1.5tb hard drive is taking a turn for the worse.

Out of nowhere the other day, it took about 3 minutes for it to mount on my desktop. When I would try and pull a file off of it...it would take forever (i.e. 75gb took over 8 hours)

First tried, Disk Utility and it would say one of two things. Either it could not repair the disk due to a "Unmounting Error" or it would take 90 mins and finally say that the drive is fine.

Tried it on other computers...no dice...same issue.

Next, I tried taking it out and placing it into a new enclosure. That did not help.

Then I tried to use Data Rescue 3 to clone the drive to get the files off of there...but that said it would take 5-6000 hours to clone. That is like 2 months!!!

Tried tech support and they told me to reformat the drive. This is NOT an option due to the fact that there are important files on the drive that have not been backed up yet and they are for a current job. If I can't get this going...I could lose the job.

I don't know what else to do!! Is there some magical code in Terminal that will save my files or get them off of there faster so I can meet my deadline in 5 days?!

What is going on?!?! HELP PLEASE!!! :(

Currently running:

Macbook Pro
10.6.7
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4gb 1067 MHz DDR3

The Drive:

Western Digital Elements
1.5tb
Format : Mac Extended Journaled
 
I would try pulling just those important files off first, stop trying to move large amounts of data from it until you get just those important files, the more you mess with it the closer it gets to failure. Once you get those files off try saving everything else.
 
I have heard of this....but would the freezer trick help transfer my files faster than 10gb an hour? How long can I use it for after pulling it from the freezer...wouldn't there be condensation once it started to hit room temperature? Keep in mind, my HD is mounting and showing up...just taking FOREVER to get files off of it.

I have been trying this method :

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050302225659382

Anyone familiar? It seems to be working twice as fast as taking files off of the hard drive manually.
 
Just a thought, I don't know if it would work, what about leaving it in the freezer while transferring the files? Run the cords in there and tape the door shut.
 
demonbabies said:
My WD ELEMENTS 1.5tb hard drive is taking a turn for the worse.

Out of nowhere the other day, it took about 3 minutes for it to mount on my desktop. When I would try and pull a file off of it...it would take forever (i.e. 75gb took over 8 hours)

First tried, Disk Utility and it would say one of two things. Either it could not repair the disk due to a "Unmounting Error" or it would take 90 mins and finally say that the drive is fine.

Tried it on other computers...no dice...same issue.

Next, I tried taking it out and placing it into a new enclosure. That did not help.

Then I tried to use Data Rescue 3 to clone the drive to get the files off of there...but that said it would take 5-6000 hours to clone. That is like 2 months!!!

Tried tech support and they told me to reformat the drive. This is NOT an option due to the fact that there are important files on the drive that have not been backed up yet and they are for a current job. If I can't get this going...I could lose the job.

I don't know what else to do!! Is there some magical code in Terminal that will save my files or get them off of there faster so I can meet my deadline in 5 days?!

What is going on?!?! HELP PLEASE!!! :(

Currently running:

Macbook Pro
10.6.7
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4gb 1067 MHz DDR3

The Drive:

Western Digital Elements
1.5tb
Format : Mac Extended Journaled
Click to expand...
that happned to one of my external hard drives once, what do u have it formatted as? and from what type of computer did u format it the 1st time??, i thought my hard drive was about to fail so i took everything of it and formatted i as NTFS from a pc, now its working wonderfully, hope that helps and keep us updated
 
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