Time Machine (External HD issues)

[sou1 so1di3r]

I have been using Time Machine on my mac ever since I got it in June, and yesterday while it was automatically backing up and it pops up and says Backup failed something something.

Well no big deal that has happened a couple of times before, so I just click back up now.....and it doesn't work. Then I unplug the HD and plug it back it, same thing. Now the HD will not even show up in finder. My computer does not even know it is there. It lights up and everything when I plug it in, but nothing happens. I have a ton of files on there too, not only Time Machine.....

what do I do?

 

[alphaod]

Sounds like your external drive died. You will need a new external drive to be your Time Machine backup.

And no need to bump your thread twice.

 

[sou1 so1di3r]

Sounds like your external drive died. You will need a new external drive to be your Time Machine backup.

And no need to bump your thread twice.

Would it really just die like that? It is not even a year old.... it's a WD 500GB

 

[sou1 so1di3r]

So someone else on another forum told me to look it up in Disk Utility, and sure enough it was there.... but I'm not sure what to do with it now. I tried to repair it but that failed

 

[sickmacdoc]

One shot might be to get Disk Warrior which repairs many more directory errors than Disk Utility can.

While the directory errors that Disk Utility threw off can be indicative of a physicaly failing drive, until there are more symptoms I would sure rather try DW to rescue the data before declaring it dead. It has been a treasure to have on hand in a few situations I have faced over the years with Macs!

 

[sou1 so1di3r]

Is that free?

 

[ChrisA]

Would it really just die like that? It is not even a year old.... it's a WD 500GB

Short answer: Yes.

The good news is that the disk inside the enclosure likely has a three year warranty. You can send it back and get a replacement free. Call WD customer service.

This also should explain why TM, while nice should never be your only backup. You need to have at least three copies of your data and you need at least one copy to be at a different geographic location. Buy a few more external drives and rotate them through an off site location.

Yes drives fail at any random time. They are most likely to fail either when they are very new or very old but it can happen any time. Drives fail about once every 3 to 5 years on average. If you own five drives expect to have to deal with a dead drive once a year. The most likely time to fail is during a backup as that is when the drive is under the most stress. A failure then wipes out your only good backup, so you'd better have a few more backps

As you have just found out never store other files that you care about on a TM drive.

I'm very sure that in 50 years there will be almost zero 50 year old photos. Hardly anyone does backups correctly.

 

[koobcamuk]

I'm very sure that in 50 years there will be almost zero 50 year old photos. Hardly anyone does backups correctly.

Would you be kind enough to go into more detail about your backup solution?

a) where's a good off-site location?

b) how do you organise your backup system?

c) do you prioritise certain data sets? i.e. work, music, movies, photos...?

thanks

 

[sou1 so1di3r]

So there is absolutley nothing I can do? It shows up in the DiskUtility... not even just erase it totally?

 

[sou1 so1di3r]

Using DiskWarrior as we speak,

*hopes for the best*

edit:

I just got error 32

twice

anyone have any other ideas?

this sucks!!!

 

[sou1 so1di3r]

Bump for anyone who can help?

I was told to try the freezer technique

 

[sou1 so1di3r]

Bump its been a few weeks still nothing