Mac Guguen Posted August 1, 2009 Share Posted August 1, 2009 okay... to explain a tad bit more... here goes Just a year ago....Ive bought this Western Digital My Passport Essential 2.5" External Hdd which runs on a USB 2.0 interface it works quite fine i guess but theres this issue that annoys me.... Every now and then... when i plug in my Hdd it works... but sometimes when i ask my Mac Pro (early 2008) to read some files off it... Hard Disk activity indicator just gone flashing non stop..... and my mac would completely Freeze... the Freeze will go on non stop... actually ive left my mac to freeze for a day until... i Forcibly Unplug the Hard Disk... and OMG... all of a sudden my Mac starts running as if the Hard Disk was keeping my Mac from moving.... So i replug it again and it did the same Freezing problem again and again from time to time.... Started looking for solutions and failed... All i came up with is this.... Mac Pro's Front Side Port cant provide enough power to run the external hdd?? weird... thought its USB 2.0 on Early 2008 Mac Pro So went thinking.... Powered USB Hub could fix it?? or should i simply just go buy myself a FW800/FW400/USB2.0 Western Digital My Passport STUDIO?? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/177661-external-hdd-gone-wrong/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
agent-squirrel Posted August 1, 2009 Share Posted August 1, 2009 If the port wasn't providing enough power to the drive then it would never work it wouldn't only work intermittently. Generally the Mac would tell you the device has malfunctioned if it cant provide necessary power. If you have nothing to loose on the drive try performing a low level format on it. If that fails then it probably has corrupted sectors and is dead. The issue where Mac OS X freezes until the drive is removed is not strange at all, it happens when the OS tries to read data from a bad sector on a disk but can't because it's bad, so will continually try and access it until it can do so or the media is removed. Your lucky it's a Mac, OS X seems to be able to recover from a drive error like that if the media is removed, Windows or even ,in my experience, Linux, will just die with either a blue screen of death or a frozen system. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/177661-external-hdd-gone-wrong/#findComment-1214654 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mac Guguen Posted August 1, 2009 Author Share Posted August 1, 2009 So from what you are saying... my External Hard Disk is partly dead?? And if its not partly dead how do i make my Mac to Try Reading a Bad Sector a END its ATTEMPTS after maybe like 3 attempts?? and that it gives a warning that the files cannot be accessed instead of making my Computer freeze till i remove the drive?? And anyways to prevent bad sectors written?? cuz this is getting into my nerves lately... i have my entire iTunes Library on the External Hard Disk because both my Mac Pro and the Macbook Pro's Itunes are running on the Library in my External Hard Disk... and i Have a Feeling to buy the Western Digital My Passport STUDIO 500GB FW800/FW400/USB 2.0 Any comments on that drive?? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/177661-external-hdd-gone-wrong/#findComment-1214664 Share on other sites More sharing options...
agent-squirrel Posted August 19, 2009 Share Posted August 19, 2009 There is no way to let Mac OS X tell you it is trying to access a bad sector, because it doesn't know. There is no real way to prevent it other than treating you machine well. The western Digital drive you speak of is excellent I sell them at work. I would hazard a guess at your drive being FUBAR for now. You need a new one. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/177661-external-hdd-gone-wrong/#findComment-1229783 Share on other sites More sharing options...
folliclemiracle Posted August 19, 2009 Share Posted August 19, 2009 Do you actually have bad sectors on the drive? You might want to try swapping the drive into a new case. I did that recently with a western digital mybook premium which did the same thing as yours (it's a 3.5" drive but it would hang the whole mac), now it seems to work OK. Cases are cheap and worth a shot. The 3.5" mybooks seem notorious. I don't know if the 2.5" ones use similar chippery. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/177661-external-hdd-gone-wrong/#findComment-1229810 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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