EBIOS READ ERROR on Time Machine HDD

[Sgt.ASavage]

As the topic mentioned, my time machine HDD got a EBIOS read error during boot, second time for my machine, and one time for another machine, two hard disk got this error in total.

So, here is the symptoms and the details:

1.) The hang occurs during chameleon loads.

2.) Both problematic hard disk are caviar green.

3.) This problem gets resolved for a while after formatting the drive.

4.) This problem only occurs in Time Machine HDDs, for me.

 

The only hypothesis that came to me is that this problem is caused by assigning drives to be "Time Machines". I don't want to believe that but since this issue has been around me for three times in jsut a few months, I'm starting to believe that. And since I'm no IT at all, I can't think of any solution except for giving up the use of time machine.

 

Please, would anyone kindly suggest some ideas?

[kdtt]

Have you tried other versions of chameleon?

and also caviar green has little conflict with mountain lion.

My caviar green is ejected after wake.

[Riley Freeman]

The Green drives have issues with overly-aggressive power management. The drive heads are set to park after 8 seconds of idle time. I wonder if that could be the problem.

 

There's a DOS-based tool from WD called wdIdle3 that allows you to disable the timer. I've used it on all my Green and Blue drives. The Black drives don't have this issue.

[XLR]

Check your drive with SMART Utility and Disk Utility to make sure it's ok, try connecting it to a different power and SATA cable if you suspect any hardware problem, reinstall Chameleon if necessary.

[Gringo Vermelho]

Speedfan on Windows is really nice for checking up on SMART stuff