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grahamie

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 16, 2012
16
0
I have a relatively new external 1TB USB 3.0 Samsung HD drive that I use with Time Machine and have a lot of other files on.

A problem started coming up this week. Every time it's plugged in, it mounts on the desktop, then within 30 seconds will disappear with the alert "The Disk was not ejected properly..."

I want to run the Disk Utility to figure out if there's a problem with the drive, but it won't stay active on the system long enough to do that.

Any ideas? Maybe it's just that the drive failed. Any solutions on getting my files off if it did fail?

Thanks a lot
 
Try this (you may have done it already).

1. Power down the Mac. All the way off.

2. Connect the problem drive.

3. Press the power-on button.

4. Wait a while.

Does anything change?
 
Try another cable

Also try another computer.

If the above sequence doesn't work, try a SMC reset of your computer.

It is posible the controller within the USB drive enclosure went bad. If so, putting the drive in another enclosure may let you grab the files off of it.

If there is a power input for the external drive try using a power brick to power it.

If its a bad drive, well its a bad drive. Send it to a data recovery service to get the files off.
 
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