External HD - Mounting Issues

[nope7308]

I purchased a Seagate Barracuda 500GB HD about three or four years ago. It is formatted as NTFS, but I installed the free driver for Mac compatibility.

It worked without issue for the first few years. However, it now makes a weird grinding noise - like the disc is accelerating then decelerating - and it takes about 10 minutes (literally) for the drive to be detected/mounted. Once the drive actually mounts, it works fine (no grinding noise, files transfer properly).

What might be causing this problem and how can I fix it? Should I be concerned that my HD is about to go, or might this be an enclosure issue? The enclosure is a 'Smart Drive', which I purchased for about $30 back in the day.

Thanks for the help.

 

[wellandbusiness]

Sounds like a drive issue, but odd that it should work fine once it has eventually been mounted.

If you can, get all your data from the drive (always a good idea to have a backup anyway!), and then reformat it - see if that makes any difference.

 

[nope7308]

Sounds like a drive issue, but odd that it should work fine once it has eventually been mounted.

If you can, get all your data from the drive (always a good idea to have a backup anyway!), and then reformat it - see if that makes any difference.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. One problem, though... I have like 400GB of data on the disc, nearly all of which is very important.

Where/how could I possibly store that data without having to burn a gazillion CD/DVD backups? This would be so much easier if I had money to burn (I'd just buy a Time Capsule).

 

[wellandbusiness]

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. One problem, though... I have like 400GB of data on the disc, nearly all of which is very important.

Think about that for a second - how important is the data if you only have it stored on that one hard drive.

Backup doesn't have to be expensive, you may have to spend on a second drive though - and by the sounds of it I would do this sooner or later. Another option would be to go for one of the online backup solutions such as Carbonite, Mozy, or similar.

I for one always keep my important data in at least three places. Keeping it on a single HD is not a wise move as ALL hard drives will fail, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when!