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Many External HDD Failures (2012 iMac)

touchUpInside

touchUpInside

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 4, 2014
127
8
UTC -07:00
Hi all,

Unfortunately, over the last few 3 or 4 years I have had many external HDD quit working (this includes Seagate ~ 3, Western Digital ~ 2, and now Toshiba ~1). Fortunately, the iMac SSD and a couple of the original Seagate (~2) have not had any problems.

I don't know what is going on they are new HDDs and last only a few weeks or few months . . . Because the internal SSD and the first external HDD have had no problems, I thought it isn't a virus. But I think I have about eight external HDDs that do not mount.

Where is the best place to go to try to resolve such a problem ? Is Apple a good place to help ?

I would rather not send the iMac off. I prefer to find somewhere local to the Seattle area.


Thanks to anyone who would like to chime in.
 
Do any of those "failed" drives work when you try them on another Mac?
Are the drives all USB, or do you have any that connect through one of your Thunderbolt ports?
Are all of your drives bus-powered (only the USB data cable), or do you have any that have a separate power connection (there would always be at least two wires attached to the drive enclosure.)
 
What format are you using for the external drives? ExFAT, FAT, APFS, MacOS Extended?
Do you use the drives on multiple OS environments? Windows, Linux, Mac, et al?
Lots of info is needed to consider what might be going on.

When you say new HDDs... are you using an existing enclosure or are they using their own.

Mount problems due to flakey cables... a real thing.
Mount problems due to improper ejection/dismount... a real thing.
Mount problems due to using a format not suited for the device use case... a real thing.

Basically we need a little more information and backstory to get a picture. All you've said was I have all these disks that refuse to mount.

What you connecting it to? What OS is it running. What drive is it? What sort of enclosure? What format is it using? Etc.
 
Okay, good questions.

I can try several of them with a PC (and with post back).

All of them are USB.

One or two of them had a separate power connector, but most of them were USB powered.
 
If your drives are formatted for the Mac (Mac OS extended, etc,) you will not likely be able to do anything with them on Windows (unless you have a utility like MacDrive installed on the PC)
 
pmiles said:
What format are you using for the external drives? ExFAT, FAT, APFS, MacOS Extended?
Do you use the drives on multiple OS environments? Windows, Linux, Mac, et al?
Lots of info is needed to consider what might be going on.

When you say new HDDs... are you using an existing enclosure or are they using their own.

Mount problems due to flakey cables... a real thing.
Mount problems due to improper ejection/dismount... a real thing.
Mount problems due to using a format not suited for the device use case... a real thing.

Basically we need a little more information and backstory to get a picture. All you've said was I have all these disks that refuse to mount.

What you connecting it to? What OS is it running. What drive is it? What sort of enclosure? What format is it using? Etc.
Click to expand...
I believe I have used both ExFAT and APFS.

I use Parallels with Windows.

These are external HDDs (from Amazon) that have individual enclosures.

I have messed around with cables and tried different ports (but don't find it helps).

Attached a picture of the six most recent ones. As mentioned, I have two older Seagates that continue to be fine and one Toshiba, but it only a couple months old. Another Toshiba that was purchased at the same time failed today.

: (
 

Attachments

  • External HDDs.png
    External HDDs.png
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DeltaMac said:
If your drives are formatted for the Mac (Mac OS extended, etc,) you will not likely be able to do anything with them on Windows (unless you have a utility like MacDrive installed on the PC)
Click to expand...
Good point. I know that a few of them are the common format.

I used to have more time to understand all these things. Unfortunately, over time, technology has not gotten simpler. It always seems to be very time consuming to stay up on all this. I had not planned to make computer service a continued part time job.
 
So, the second Toshiba is currently working . . . I did move it to a different port, but it initially it didn't work and now does about 10 minutes later. Again, the internal SSHD and the 1st and 3rd eternal drives have not had problems . . .

It kind of does not make any sense.
 
Are the external drives all spinning hard drives?
Do any of your enclosures have external power connectors (which may be optional)?
 
DeltaMac said:
Are the external drives all spinning hard drives?
Do any of your enclosures have external power connectors (which may be optional)?
Click to expand...
Most of them spin, at least when first powered. One of them had a repetitive click--and I know that is not a good sign. Looking at the ones I have here, none of them have an external power connector. The one that did have an eternal power connector is somewhere else--I kind of ruled it out as ever working again--maybe it's the one that made the clicking.
 
Yes, a spinning hard drive always spins.
So, that's on me -- I was really asking if you had just hard drives, or if you also have externals that are SSDs. (I have about 15 external SSDs that are 2.5", (and about 10 more that are some variety of m.2/NVME card), which, of course, have no moving parts. The idea that I have is that your USB bus may not have the power reserve to mount and run spinning hard drives reliably, but an SSD may be much easier on power needs, and might work when a spinning hard drive may not even mount.
I agree, a clicking hard drive is usually a "death" signal. (SSDs are completely silent, so may sometimes fail with no kind of warning.)
When you test a drive - have you tried plugging in directly to your Mac, not using the USB hub that I see in your picture? (The external USB hub that you have would have its own power supply, so USB devices plugged into that hub wouldn't be using power from the iMac's USB bus. How long have you had that USB hub?

Have you had any USB drive failures that were NOT using that USB hub?
 
DeltaMac said:
Yes, a spinning hard drive always spins.
So, that's on me -- I was really asking if you had just hard drives, or if you also have externals that are SSDs. (I have about 15 external SSDs that are 2.5", (and about 10 more that are some variety of m.2/NVME card), which, of course, have no moving parts. The idea that I have is that your USB bus may not have the power reserve to mount and run spinning hard drives reliably, but an SSD may be much easier on power needs, and might work when a spinning hard drive may not even mount.
I agree, a clicking hard drive is usually a "death" signal. (SSDs are completely silent, so may sometimes fail with no kind of warning.)
When you test a drive - have you tried plugging in directly to your Mac, not using the USB hub that I see in your picture? (The external USB hub that you have would have its own power supply, so USB devices plugged into that hub wouldn't be using power from the iMac's USB bus. How long have you had that USB hub?

Have you had any USB drive failures that were NOT using that USB hub?
Click to expand...
Okay, good things to try again.

In the past, I did try plugging some directly into the iMac. Since it didn't help back then, I kind of quit thinking of that as being a possible solution. I may not get time to work on this for a few days.

Are there any macOS viruses like this ? I would think something like that would attack all drives (rather than new drives).

Thanks for taking some time to share ideas. I will try more things tomorrow.
 
If you are considering the possibility of a "virus" that affects USB drives (and apparently nothing else), I did notice that you said you use Windows in Parallels. THAT would be a more likely scenario for some kind of malware.
But, do you have any kind of malware scanning app on your Mac? I occasionally scan my Mac with Malwarebytes, which is considered to be all most users need. It's free, and may find something on your Mac, then quarantine any threats. At least, it will give you some reassurance that you don't need to be too concerned about malware on your Mac.
 
DeltaMac said:
If you are considering the possibility of a "virus" that affects USB drives (and apparently nothing else), I did notice that you said you use Windows in Parallels. THAT would be a more likely scenario for some kind of malware.
But, do you have any kind of malware scanning app on your Mac? I occasionally scan my Mac with Malwarebytes, which is considered to be all most users need. It's free, and may find something on your Mac, then quarantine any threats. At least, it will give you some reassurance that you don't need to be too concerned about malware on your Mac.
Click to expand...
There are only a few programs that I use on Windows. And, do not use the internet on Windows.

I have used Malwarebytes and have Avast Security.
 
OP:

Some advice:

First, for external data drives that will be used ONLY with the Mac...
DO NOT format them to exfat or another PC format.
Format them with a "Mac-specific" format.
Things will just go better that way.

Second, if the drives are platter-based (not SSDs), then DO NOT format them to APFS.
Instead, format them to HFS+ (also called Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).

APFS will over-work platter-based drives with fragmentation and disk-thrashing.
You don't need it, even if you are booting/running from an internal SSD that is using APFS.
 
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Fishrrman said:
OP:

Some advice:

First, for external data drives that will be used ONLY with the Mac...
DO NOT format them to exfat or another PC format.
Format them with a "Mac-specific" format.
Things will just go better that way.

Second, if the drives are platter-based (not SSDs), then DO NOT format them to APFS.
Instead, format them to HFS+ (also called Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).

APFS will over-work platter-based drives with fragmentation and disk-thrashing.
You don't need it, even if you are booting/running from an internal SSD that is using APFS.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the advice !

I am still working through this as time permits.
 
Last edited:
touchUpInside said:
Thanks for the advice !

Fishrrman​

DO NOT format them to exfat or another PC format.
Format them with a "Mac-specific" format.
Things will just go better that way.
Click to expand...


Quick update . . .

The type of format may be the key. The two oldest external HDDs use Mac OS extended. Other drives I used ExFAT and APFS. If possible, I will need to check the format of non-working HDDs. One of the six that quit working is readable with a Windows laptop . . .

Hopefully, if nothing else, I may be able to reformat some of them to Mac OS extended and get some use out of them. Although, I am not sure if it's possible to reformat drive that is unmountable.
.
.
.
 
Last edited:
"I am not sure if it's possible to reformat drive that is unmountable."

If the drive has an internal hardware problem, the only option may be to replace it.

If it won't mount on the Mac, try another Mac.
If it won't mount on ANY Mac, try mounting it on a PC.

If it will mount on the PC, you could erase it to a PC format.
Then, take it back to the Mac and see if it will mount so that disk utility can "see" it.
If disk utility "sees" it, try erasing it to Mac format.

Fishrrman's advice re problem-solving:
"When the obvious course of action doesn't work, look for the pathways that aren't obvious..."
 
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Quick update. I had time to recover 4-5 HDDs by using a Windows laptop to mount, erase, and format (ExFAT), then using the Mac to mount and format (Journaled Extended). Not sure how good these drives are now, but at least they all mount (on the Mac) and seem useable. I don't think I ever lost much data, but only because I was able to acquire enough drives in advance to stay ahead. Now, there are a few recovered to keep up again. Before using the Windows laptop, the Mac was just not able to mount, repair, or reformat them.

Cheers, all !
 
touchUpInside said:
Quick update. I had time to recover 4-5 HDDs by using a Windows laptop to mount, erase, and format (ExFAT), then using the Mac to mount and format (Journaled Extended).
Click to expand...
touchUpInside said:
Before using the Windows laptop, the Mac was just not able to mount, repair, or reformat them.
Click to expand...
Y-e-a-h… It’s sad and frustrating how continually incapable Apple’s Disk Utility is versus other OS’s included tools. I’ve had to use Windows to ‘revive’ format external drives a few times.

touchUpInside said:
Not sure how good these drives are now, but at least they all mount (on the Mac) and seem useable.
Click to expand...
Yay! If you’re willing to allocate additional time and effort:

• “Zero” the drive(s) to recognize/catch bad sectors/blocks -- In most cases, when a HDD begins to exhibit bad sectors/blocks it has a critical failure.

www.seagate.com

How Do I Low-Level Format a SATA or ATA (IDE) Hard Drive? | Seagate US

Description and explanation of "low-level format" and instructions to perform such an action.
www.seagate.com

www.howtogeek.com

How to Wipe (Securely Erase) Your Devices Before Disposing of or Selling Them

Time for a new device?
www.howtogeek.com www.howtogeek.com

• Check extended S.M.A.R.T. status:

Viewing S.M.A.R.T. status of external drives on macOS requires extra steps and is only supported by some drive interface controllers.

Binary Fruit provides a trial period for their DriveDX utility software.

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health diagnostics and monitoring utility

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health (S.M.A.R.T.) diagnostics and monitoring utility. Save yourself the data loss and downtime that is associated with unexpected SSD and HDD failures. Don't worry about losing your important data, music, and photographs.
binaryfruit.com binaryfruit.com

For USB drives, you will need to install a third-party driver:

Knowledge base « BinaryFruit

binaryfruit.com binaryfruit.com

If you have a recent Mac:

support.gosymply.com

Enable hardware driver support on T2 and M1 based Macs

TABLE OF CONTENTS Prepare your Mac for installation 1 - Apple Silicon-based Macs 2 - Intel-based Macs with a T2 Security Chip 3 - Intel-based Macs without T2 Security Chip Prepare your Mac for installation 1 - Apple Silicon-based Macs B...
support.gosymply.com support.gosymply.com

About Startup Security Utility on a Mac with the Apple T2 Security Chip - Apple Support

Use Startup Security Utility to make sure that your Mac always starts up from your designated startup disk, and always from a legitimate, trusted operating system.
support.apple.com support.apple.com


P.S. Some extra good to know info:

www.howtogeek.com

You Only Need to Wipe a Disk Once to Securely Erase It

You've probably heard that you need to overwrite a drive multiple times to make the data unrecoverable.
www.howtogeek.com www.howtogeek.com
 
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MacCheetah3 said:
• Check extended S.M.A.R.T. status:

Viewing S.M.A.R.T. status of external drives on macOS requires extra steps and is only supported by some drive interface controllers.

Binary Fruit provides a trial period for their DriveDX utility software.
Click to expand...
Plus 1 for DriveDX !

I've been using this tool for quite a while now and it clearly shows all signs of wear/ EOL of a disk.
Additional to the install you may have to download a patch from binary fruit to enable SMART readings for external drives, as this is not enabled by default running a Mac OS.
IMO definitely worth the relatively small price to prevent bad scenarios coming up e.g. data loss etc
 
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Okay, I had time to get setup with DriveDX, too. Given the types of issues I've dealt with, it seems useful (and it's on sale).

Any pointers on what to look for regarding potential issues showing up using DriveDX are appreciated. Maybe a link to a post/thread that provides an example issue.

One drive shows the following message. Via CCC, this is a backup drive. So, I swapped it with a different HDD (that DriveDX indicates is healthy). Any comments welcome.

DriveDX211125a.png
 
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