is my external hard drive in trouble?

[furcalchick]

we just had a power surge at my house and of course, my mac said i didn't properly eject my hard drive. the drives came back up and it looks like it's in tact, but being a bit nervous after all of the stories of hard drives breaking down after power surges, i'm wondering if my hard drive is okay as of right now or if there could be any kind of damage to the drive. btw, it was plugged into the surge protector. should i panic or not? thanks.

(p.s., can someone move this to the mac basics form?)

 

[miles01110]

It's hard to diagnose a hardware problem if the unit is intact. If it works, it should be ok. Try keeping it on for a while and see if there are any problems.

Depending on the rating of the surge protector and the power of the surge, your drive was protected.

 

[furcalchick]

the hard drive mounts on the mac fine and the files i tested look to be in tact. any reason to be concerned?

 

[firestarter]

the hard drive mounts on the mac fine and the files i tested look to be in tact. any reason to be concerned?

Should be OK. Run 'First Aid -> Verify Disk' in Disk Utility - this should highlight any potential data glitches.

If the hardware survived the surge OK and you're using a journalled filesystem (which you probably are) everything should be fine.

 

[kastenbrust]

Its not possible for the power to have surged into your hard drive if it was connected by USB or firewire so its fine.

 

[furcalchick]

the power just went off again, and i'm getting concerned about the hard drive.

i wonder why external hard drives fail after a power surge anyway...

 

[furcalchick]

did the verify disk and both drives are fine. and yes, they are on the journaled system. i guess this more likely happens with windows. thanks for the tips guys.

 

[dXTC]

Looks like your surge protector did its job. We're glad your data came out OK.

If this happens a lot at your house, I would suggest getting a small UPS, preferably with a built-in voltage regulator to prevent "brownouts". I'm using a CyberPower one myself, and it keeps my iMac and external hard drive running smoothly. It's more than worth the investment, and the smaller ones are rather inexpensive nowadays.

 

[wiseguy27]

Should be OK. Run 'First Aid -> Verify Disk' in Disk Utility - this should highlight any potential data glitches.

If the hardware survived the surge OK and you're using a journalled filesystem (which you probably are) everything should be fine.

And while you're at this, "Verify Permissions" as well. I don't think you'd have anything to worry about.