External hard drives keep breaking with Macbook pro

[louise1411]

I'm having to buy a new external hard drive roughly every month - they just keep dying, and disk utility can't fix them. I use time machine to back up my macbook pro, which is under year old - brand new hard drive, just don't know the cause of it. Any thoughts most welcome, thanks.

Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4 (11E53)
2.3 GHz Intel Core i5

 

[GGJstudios]

I'm having to buy a new external hard drive roughly every month - they just keep dying, and disk utility can't fix them. I use time machine to back up my macbook pro, which is under year old - brand new hard drive, just don't know the cause of it. Any thoughts most welcome, thanks.

Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4 (11E53)
2.3 GHz Intel Core i5

Either you're buying crappy hard drives or they're not really breaking and you just think they are. Your MBP isn't going to "break" any external drive. What makes you think they're broken?

 

[louise1411]

Well Time Machine won't back up, and they don't show up in the finder, so I verify/fix in Disk Utility which tells me they can't be repaired and I need to back up files elsewhere.

I do buy increasingly good ones - £100 a time?

thanks

 

[GGJstudios]

Well Time Machine won't back up, and they don't show up in the finder, so I verify/fix in Disk Utility which tells me they can't be repaired and I need to back up files elsewhere.

Run Disk Utility on a drive and when you get the error messages, take a screen shot and post it.

 

[Zedsdead185]

I'm having to buy a new external hard drive roughly every month - they just keep dying, and disk utility can't fix them. I use time machine to back up my macbook pro, which is under year old - brand new hard drive, just don't know the cause of it. Any thoughts most welcome, thanks.

Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4 (11E53)
2.3 GHz Intel Core i5

How many hard drives have you gotten through? Maybe your mishandling the drive? When its in use don't go moving it about. You must remember that they are still high speed moving object inside their enclosure that are affected by movement. Look after it and it should look after you.

 

[louise1411]

I do look after them - keep them in padded cases and don't move them ... got through about 7 this year? I'm scared to loose my backups, obvs.

I just thought it must be something my mac's doing as i've only had this prob with this mac.

Will post a screenshot later when i'm home - thanks.

 

[Zedsdead185]

I do look after them - keep them in padded cases and don't move them ... got through about 7 this year? I'm scared to loose my backups, obvs.

I just thought it must be something my mac's doing as i've only had this prob with this mac.

Will post a screenshot later when i'm home - thanks.

Thats ok then. Understand that I had to mention that because I've seen how some people treat hard drives with the assumption that they are invincible. I'll leave you in the hands of GGJstudios as he seems to be a very knowledgable techy and is more likely to find a solution than I am.

 

[noshjewman]

Picking up a very old thread... I kept thinking I was being sent dud hard drives by Amazon, but I have just realised it must be my MacBook Pro killing them: as it has just killed a second that was working before.

The drives are completely dead - they don't light up and Disk Utility doesn't see them. Any ideas what this might be? Is it fixable?

 

[Basic75]

Not sure whether this helps, but one thing I've noticed is that external hard drives can be unreliable with cheap or long cables, or with other setups that don't deliver enough power to them.

 

[Neon_pixie2022]

This same thing has been happening to me now for the past 3 years - approx every 3-6 months I have had to buy a new external hard drive and get one recovered which seems insane. I just sent a hard drive to be recovered after only 3 months - it was a brand new seagate hard drive - I kept it in a case all the time and it was literally the cable falling out once that completely 'killed it'. I didn't get any replies from Seagate helpdesk still after enquiring (I am in china and had to get help from overseas helpdesk, there doesn't seem to be help here). Apple said there is nothing in my Macbook Air that would cause this but clearly nobody else around me is having these issues. Now it has happened yet again I don't really know what to do any more besides try a new brand of hard drive (LaCie anyone?) or buy a new laptop!

 

[satcomer]

This same thing has been happening to me now for the past 3 years - approx every 3-6 months I have had to buy a new external hard drive and get one recovered which seems insane. I just sent a hard drive to be recovered after only 3 months - it was a brand new seagate hard drive - I kept it in a case all the time and it was literally the cable falling out once that completely 'killed it'. I didn't get any replies from Seagate helpdesk still after enquiring (I am in china and had to get help from overseas helpdesk, there doesn't seem to be help here). Apple said there is nothing in my Macbook Air that would cause this but clearly nobody else around me is having these issues. Now it has happened yet again I don't really know what to do any more besides try a new brand of hard drive (LaCie anyone?) or buy a new laptop!

Seem like a basic basic of Lacie bad design! Over the years the accessory threads on these drives make very worried about the device from that company!

 

[MajorFubar]

Can I ask what brand you are buying? I've been using a WD My Passport 4TB HDD as a time machine for three months now and it's 100% reliable. It cost me about £80 from Amazon. Before that I used a Seagate 2TB HDD for 11 years, which still was fully functional when I officially retired it on April 5th when my Studio Max arrived.

Not boasting btw, just trying to point out that your experience of a hard drive dying every few months is not at all typical. Something's not right.