External Hard Drive Screwed???

[dmk1974]

I have a Seagate External Hard Drive that I have been using for my Time Machine backups for a little over a year. I connect it to all of the Macs in the house every week and run the backups.

Today, when I was done backing up my first MacBook Pro, I clicked eject in Finder like I always do, but it would not allow me to. I confirmed that the TM backup was completed and cleaned up and all and still would not let me. I told it to force eject and after the prompt on the screen, I detached the drive.

When trying to connect to the second machine (Mac Mini), it would not recognize. Rebooted and so on...no success.

I connected it again to the first machine and it isn't showing up either. In Disk Utility however, it shows the drive, but the TM partition is grayed out (it's the only partition on the disk). It won't scan, repair, or unmount or anything.

I decided, fine, I'll even try to erase the disk and initiate the backups from scratch. It just sits in the "Unmounting disk" phase for 20+ minutes.

Is this drive totally screwed? Is there any way to get it so I can erase and format it from scratch? Thanks!

 

[FreakinEurekan]

That could be a drive failure causing what you're seeing. See if you can partition instead of erase in Disk Utility. Also try it on a different one of the computers. If it won't partition or erase, I'm betting on fried (check http://support.seagate.com/customer/en-US/warranty_validation.jsp?form=0 to see if it's still under warranty).

 

[dmk1974]

That could be a drive failure causing what you're seeing. See if you can partition instead of erase in Disk Utility. Also try it on a different one of the computers. If it won't partition or erase, I'm betting on fried (check http://support.seagate.com/customer/en-US/warranty_validation.jsp?form=0 to see if it's still under warranty).

Thanks. I did check and I am still under warranty until April 2014.

I was able to get it to read only, but nothing to write to it. I wound up formatting it via Disk Utility as a FAT drive, and then formatting back as a Mac drive. Partitioned and resetting my TM backups from scratch. I ran the Verify Disk and Repair Disk in Disk Utility and it says it checked out fine. Is there a better disk check utility out there for Mac that is recommended? Thanks!

 

[FreakinEurekan]

I ran the Verify Disk and Repair Disk in Disk Utility and it says it checked out fine. Is there a better disk check utility out there for Mac that is recommended?

That's all I use.

I connect it to all of the Macs in the house every week and run the backups.

Rather than carrying the disk around - is one of the Macs always (or usually) on, and running Lion or ML? If so download the Server app from the Mac App Store to that computer ($19) and set up server-based backups. You leave the disk connected to that one computer, and all your other Macs back up hourly to it. I have this set up on my Mac Mini and I have two iMacs and a MacBook backing up to it, works smoothly.

 

[dmk1974]

That's all I use.


Rather than carrying the disk around - is one of the Macs always (or usually) on, and running Lion or ML? If so download the Server app from the Mac App Store to that computer ($19) and set up server-based backups. You leave the disk connected to that one computer, and all your other Macs back up hourly to it. I have this set up on my Mac Mini and I have two iMacs and a MacBook backing up to it, works smoothly.

This USB drive is actually a redundant backup. I have a Time Capsule that the Macs all backup to every hour or two, but I plug this USB drive in every week just to have an additional backup (just in case). It's also much faster to restore from if/when I make a Mac upgrade.