External HD - Freezes when copying, need help

[Nym]

Hi everyone!

I bought an External HD IDE 3,5 Enclosure and set up my old backup (a 40GB disc just for the most important stuff) and I connected it into my iMac (24" Base Model) via USB 2.0. OSX recognized it within a sec. Problem is, I already tried to format it using Disk Utility in various ways (MS-DOS, UNIX, Mac OS Journaled, etc) and every time I drag a folder to backup it just freezes in 5 seconds after the transfer has started.

To recover from this I have to turn off the disk from the power button on the enclosure since the little "stop copying" cross doesn't seem to work in this case nor ejecting the HD mounted on the desktop.

Am I missing something here? Any help is appreciated.
Thx in advance.

EDIT: Anyone? can't believe it's the first time I have a problem and I get no answer even in MacRumors, lol, the world is changing!

 

[eduo]

It's not the first time. I'm getting the exact same thing. Got a 750GB disk and it's doing the very exact same thing to me. It's annoying because I had it stored and didn't get around using it until now, after a couple of months bought.

Haven't found anything on the web either (not easy to search for, this problem) but one thing is for sure: OSX really drops the beachball on this one. It completely freezes and stops working sometimes.

 

[QuarterSwede]

Wierd. I just bought a 320GB My Book and it works flawlessly. Format (HFS+ J) to partitioning to complete system backup to copying single files. All this with an internal drive that is failing (reason for the backup drive).

 

[eduo]

Wierd. I just bought a 320GB My Book and it works flawlessly. Format (HFS+ J) to partitioning to complete system backup to copying single files. All this with an internal drive that is failing (reason for the backup drive).

FWIW, I'm sure it's actually a problem with the HD itself. My complaint is probably aimed at OSX's inability to unfreeze itself and detect there is an issue. I left it beachballing the other day to see if something would happen and it kept doing that for 8 hours until I got tired. Another day all the system froze (no doubt because some program tried to access the mounted disks or something).