External HD won't stay on...

[thomamon]

So I have had two LaCie External Hard Drives and decided to add a new one. I bought the 8gb TB.

For some reason tho, this one will not stay on. After a while the HD disconnects and I have to reboot to get it to show up again. Anyone have any clue what is going on or what I can do to fix that?

 

[ColdCase]

USB? USB can be quirky, especially sleep mode firmware interaction with Macs. Try a different cable. There is a utility that some use to keep drives from spinning down and sleeping. I had something similar with an ORINCO enclosure and they sent me updated firmware that essentially disabled sleep modes. The enclosure/drives have been solid ever since. I would have expected LaCie to have that sorted out however.... so it could be a bad drive, enclosure, or cable.

Thunderbolt? bad cable or enclosure.

 

[Fishrrman]

Some thoughts...

In the energy saver preference pane, there's an option to "put hard disks to sleep when possible".
You want to UNcheck this option.

If that doesn't work, there's a little app out there called "Keep Drive Spinning" which you can find here:
http://jon.stovell.info/software/
Might be worth a try...

 

[thomamon]

USB? USB can be quirky, especially sleep mode firmware interaction with Macs. Try a different cable. There is a utility that some use to keep drives from spinning down and sleeping. I had something similar with an ORINCO enclosure and they sent me updated firmware that essentially disabled sleep modes. The enclosure/drives have been solid ever since. I would have expected LaCie to have that sorted out however.... so it could be a bad drive, enclosure, or cable.

Thunderbolt? bad cable or enclosure.

It is thunderbolt!

 

[thomamon]

Some thoughts...

In the energy saver preference pane, there's an option to "put hard disks to sleep when possible".
You want to UNcheck this option.

If that doesn't work, there's a little app out there called "Keep Drive Spinning" which you can find here:
http://jon.stovell.info/software/
Might be worth a try...

OK, unselected that in preferences, thanks!

 

[matreya]

It is thunderbolt!

Then under no circumstances should it be disappearing from your desktop and only being available after a reboot... either the enclosure or the cable is defective.

 

[thomamon]

Then under no circumstances should it be disappearing from your desktop and only being available after a reboot... either the enclosure or the cable is defective.

How do I figure out which one?

 

[matreya]

If you have other Thunderbolt drives, then you could swap cables around and see if the problem moves to a different drive...