Extrenal Drive now crashes computer

[bobwooderton]

Hi Guys, I'm about to call it a day, pack up and go home. Just spent the whole night trying to figure this out. I recently installed os 10.6 on my macbook, upgraded to 10.6.2 and eveything ws still working fine. Then, without thinking, I ripped out my shuffle and plugged in my mirrored (software) raid array of 2 drives... I immediately got the dimmed screen/you must restart your computer in all languages-screen. Now, whenever I plug in the raid into the usb the computer's screen goes dim and I get the same error message in all languages. I've tried booting with the install disk, still crashes.

I have all my most important files on that drve... any help would be beyond amazing.

 

[fluffyx]

Uhoh.

I'd love to jump to a conclusion, but it's not very common that USB hard drives cause that error message (called a Kernel Panic).

To be thorough, is there another Mac that you can try plugging the drives into? Does the problem happen on the other Mac?

I'd also try plugging one drive (not both) in, and see if it causes a Kernel Panic. If one drive causes the Kernel Panic but not the other, it suggests a problem with just that one drive.

The good news is that you are using a mirrored RAID, so with the right tools you should be able to get your files back.