OSX Locked External Drive as Read-Only?

[rick3000]

I use an external drive to store my video library, I was moving some things around and one of the main folders with a few hundred GB on it started to freeze up. If I tried to scroll or select anything Finder would freeze. Relaunching Finder would eliminate the freeze, but same problem every time I tried to access that folder. So I unmounted the drive and reconnected and got a popup that the drive was now Read Only and suggesting I backup the disk as soon as possible. I previously had some other weird issues with this drive, where files past a certain point in the alphabet would not appear in a certain folder unless I searched for them.

I ran First Aid via Disk Utility on the drive and it passed, but the partition First Aid fails, and I get the following info (this is different than the first time I ran it when I got a Problem -69842 error):

Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Invalid sibling link
Rebuilding catalog B-tree.
The volume XYZ could not be repaired.
File system check exit code is 8.
Restoring the original state found as mounted.
File system verify or repair failed.

I am backing it up now, it mounts and works fine, but it is read-only.
Is there any way to resolve this without backing up, wiping and copying back all of the data?
Is this a drive problem or a partition problem?
Any way to avoid this in the future?

Thanks!

 

[Fishrrman]

1. Get ANOTHER drive FIRST
2. Move your data to it
3. ERASE the problem drive, IF it will erase
4. Try disk utility's "repair disk" function on it
5. Do you get a "good report"?
6. If so, repeat the test FIVE TIMES in succession
7. If you get a good report each and every time, I'd use the drive again, but for "non critical" storage.

 

[rick3000]

Thanks for the reply!

I just finished backing up the drive, it took over a day. I used CCC to copy the drive and it identified the files/folders that were causing errors, all of them are files I was moving when I force relaunched Finder which I think might have corrupted them. I recovered those files from a backup, and the drive itself appears to have a clean bill of health after wiping and running First Aid multiple times. I also use DriveDX which also said the drive was healthy. I'm inclined to think it's a software only issue because the drive is only a few months old.

 

[Fishrrman]

"I used CCC to copy the drive and it identified the files/folders that were causing errors, all of them are files I was moving when I force relaunched Finder which I think might have corrupted them"

THIS was "the answer".

When the finder tries to copy a bunch of files, if it encounters one or more "corrupted" files, it will abort the ENTIRE copy process -- and then won't even tell you why it quit.

BUT... with CCC... if CCC runs into a corrupted file during a clone, it will KEEP ON GOING. It will "pass over" the bad file and make note of it. When done, it presents you with a list of the bad files.

CCC is almost always "the better way to do it" when moving a large block of files.