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External Hard Drive Problem

tjorvijons

tjorvijons

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 4, 2017
4
0
Hey!

I have a 3tb external hard drive that I am currently using with my Macbook Pro 2016. Whenever I plug it in to the USB Hub I am using, it works fine, but if I plug it out on accident without clicking the eject, and plug it back in, it doesn't let me access it again without going over to a PC and repairing it.

Basically whenever the USB moves or goes accidently out of the computer, the hard drive doesn't show up and I don't know why. It pops up on a PC and says "there is a problem with this drive" and I select repair and then it starts working... What is the problem here?
 
That article doesn't emphasize enough the corruption that can occur when disks or USB drives are incorrectly removed.

I'm of the thinking that interrupting the read/writes that occur system-wise can possibly corrupt not only the drive removed but also the system drive. I have no citation for this, however.

Quit doing that.
 
I don't know if you didn't notice but I said "accidently"...

The thing is my USB-C Hub isn't that stable, sometimes it just disconnects when I move the laptop just a tiny bit and that causes it to eject without preparing it for it.

I just want to know why I have to plug it into a PC to repair it, not just the mac...
 
That's a good question and it's probably because the drive isn't formatted for Mac specifically. Is that correct? Windows wouldn't be able to repair it if it was.

That hub you have sounds like a nightmare. Would a different/longer/more flexible cable keep that from happening?
 
Don't know why you would repair the drive in Windows unless it was a FAT32 drive. For exFAT or HFS drives, you should be able to repair permissions in Disk Utility on an unmounted drive and get the drive to a mountable state. But other posters are absolutely right that you should mitigate whatever the cabling issue is before doing so since that can only save your paint so many times before bad blocks subsume your data or the boot record becomes irreparable.
 
This is a weakness of ExFAT and a known issue with ExFAT and Macs, where a sudden power loss (commonly) causes file corruption (and, in some cases, in severity beyond what Windows ChkDsk can repair - this can happen with Windows too, but it is much more common with Macs for some reason.) There is nothing you can do to prevent this other than avoid ejecting the drive (and using a UPS if it is not bus powered.) If you are going to continue to use the hub, using a journaled filesystem is the way to go (even though sudden power loss can certainly still cause issues).

Whatever you do, be sure to backup the files on this partition to a NTFS or HFS drive/partition! ExFAT absolutely sucks. (Both Microsoft and Apple suck on the front for not coming to some sort of agreement on a shared journaled filesystem for joint usage.)
 
OP wrote:
"Basically whenever the USB moves or goes accidently out of the computer, the hard drive doesn't show up and I don't know why. It pops up on a PC and says "there is a problem with this drive" and I select repair and then it starts working... What is the problem here?"

Never unplug an external drive unless you first drag its icon to the trash to "unmount" it.
You can damage the drive's directory (or drivers) this way.

You've been lucky so far -- you've been able to get the drives mountable again.
But sometimes, the problem could be so bad that the only way to use the drive again would be to erase it and start over.

If you're having problems with "accidental" disconnections while plugged into a hub, my advice is...
... DON'T plug it into the hub. Plug it directly into the Mac.

Also -- if you keep important Mac files on an external drive, that drive is best formatted to HFS+ (with journaling enabled).
If you need to "share" files between a Mac and PC, use a drive intended for that purpose. A USB flash drive often does the job...
 
Fishrrman said:
OP wrote:
"Basically whenever the USB moves or goes accidently out of the computer, the hard drive doesn't show up and I don't know why. It pops up on a PC and says "there is a problem with this drive" and I select repair and then it starts working... What is the problem here?"

Never unplug an external drive unless you first drag its icon to the trash to "unmount" it.
You can damage the drive's directory (or drivers) this way.

You've been lucky so far -- you've been able to get the drives mountable again.
But sometimes, the problem could be so bad that the only way to use the drive again would be to erase it and start over.

If you're having problems with "accidental" disconnections while plugged into a hub, my advice is...
... DON'T plug it into the hub. Plug it directly into the Mac.

Also -- if you keep important Mac files on an external drive, that drive is best formatted to HFS+ (with journaling enabled).
If you need to "share" files between a Mac and PC, use a drive intended for that purpose. A USB flash drive often does the job...
Click to expand...

Are you not getting the point dude? I have the 2016 MBP which doesn't have any ****ing ports. Then I am using a hub which sticks to my computer and sometimes it get disconnected or moves out a bit. I don't see how you can't get that? I am not trying to ****ing eject it without clicking eject, it happens on accident. Why can you take a hard drive out of your PC without clicking some eject button but not on mac?
 
Wow. People are taking time out of their lives to try and help you, and this is how you repay them?
 
"Why can you take a hard drive out of your PC without clicking some eject button but not on mac?"

Because that's the way the Mac OS operates.
Get used to it.
Or... get used to the problems you've been experiencing.
Your choice!
 
I can understand the OP's frustration as folks keep answering in a way that feels like they haven't read the entire thread.

The OP has a hub that is dangerous to keeping a stable external drive.

tjorvijons said:
Why can you take a hard drive out of your PC without clicking some eject button but not on mac?
Click to expand...

You probably ought to read up on that...check here for instance.
 
BrianBaughn said:
I can understand the OP's frustration as folks keep answering in a way that feels like they haven't read the entire thread.

The OP has a hub that is dangerous to keeping a stable external drive.



You probably ought to read up on that...check here for instance.
Click to expand...

You get my point dude!:) But honestly I am going to buy another hub for this, this isn't going to work..
 
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