Why is my external HDD flashing continually ?

[babbler]

Hi

I have an ATMT 300Gb external drive with USB connection on my G4 powerbook. It is configured with two partitions; 1 is a bootable backup of my system disk maintained by daily backups with Silverkeeper software.

Whenever it is attached, I can hear that it is constantly working and its activity light flashes continually. I can eject it without it complaining, but it starts humming again as soon as I reattach it. If I look at disk activity with activity monitor I see lots of write activity but little or no read activity. Does that refer to all disks on the system or just the internal drive ?

Before I reformatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and partitioned, it did not do this (it was a FAT32 drive). But my other Mac external disks don't behave like this.

Any ideas before it grinds itself to oblivion?

Thanks

 

[hodgjy]

How long does it "grind"?

Are you running Tiger? It's possible that Spotlight is indexing your drive and you eject the drive before it's completed, so it has to start over the next time you mount it.

 

[techster85]

My Maxtor external (one touch 320 gig) does this too! It started while I was on a trip and doing some video editing. I think it got zapped by a power surge or something. It will mount, but it takes FOREVER and then when it does mount the light blinks constantly until my computer sleeps. It has given me problems ejecting because it is "in use."

All that to say, I think my interface is going out, and your might be the same situation, you might try to pull the drive and use one of the usb interfaces from Newegg to test it.

 

[babbler]

How long does it "grind"?

Are you running Tiger? It's possible that Spotlight is indexing your drive and you eject the drive before it's completed, so it has to start over the next time you mount it.

It ground for many hours yesterday before I ejected it.

Yes, I am running Tiger.

You could be right about it being indexed by spotlight, I will let it grind on all day today and see if it sorts itself out.

Thanks