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Problem with external Harddrive

prechrchet

prechrchet

macrumors regular
Original poster
I've got a Western Digital Harddrive that is acting up.

First, I cannot get either my Macbook or my Mac Pro to read it. It powers up, the blue light comes on, I can hear it spinning... and spinning,... and Spinning.

When I moved it from my Macbook to my Mac Pro, I got the same thing, except that not only did the HD not work, all of a sudden my keyboard and wireless mouse (the receiver for which is plugged into a USB port on the keyboard) both stopped working.

When I did I hard restart (by holding down the power button until the lights all went off, and then starting it again), everything works fine. (I've unplugged the offending HD when I do this).

1) Any idea what the odds are of fixing the HD?
2) Any idea why my USB Keyboard and wireless mouse would be effected?

Thanks!
 
It could be the enclosure's logic board failing, and its failing usb connection messing up your other usb peripherals. If you're out of the warranty period, you can dismantle the enclosure and take out the harddrive and try to recover information that way by either connecting it in another enclosure or via a SATA to usb cable. Unfortunately, failure of hdds and their surrounding components is part of using these mechanical drives.

Also, try going to WD forums and asking. When I had a failing acomdata external a while back, many had already posted the same exact experience and possible solutions that were of great help.
 
I think your easiest option is cracking open the case, and if it's a 3.5" drive, pop it in an open bay in your Mac Pro (if you have one that is), or find a cheap(ish) enclosure for it if it is 2.5"
 
I've pulled the HD from its casing, and have installed it in Bay 2 of my Mac Pro.

The finder is not showing it, so I am running Disk Utility. DU is able to see the disk, but tells me it needs to repair, which I am doing.

Questions:

1) How long should this take? So far, it is showing "Volume Repair Complete," and is now updating boot support partitions, which it has been doing for a while now.
2) Does the fact that DU is able to recognize the HD mean that I am likely to get my data back?
 
Disk Utility didn't work.

However, for what ever reason, I can now see the disk in the Finder window, and am copying over the files that I really, really, really need.

Hope I can get them all!
 
Thank Heavens!!!!

It actually worked! We got all of our files copied over, installed on another HD that we already had, and I now have an extra harddrive in my Mac Pro.

Next step: rearrange where/how we store our material so that this doesn't happen again.
 
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