Have I Ruined My New External Drive…?

[Paulie_Jay]

Hello, first time user so many apologies if i have posted this to the wrong board.

I recently acquired a Glyph Studio 2TB external drive in order to back up my 27" iMac, quadcore Intel, running Lion. I'm using Firewire 800 as my connection. I ran Time Machine to perform the backup, but the indexing seemed to be taking forever (many days) and I decided to stop the backup. I started again and the same thing happened, so after searching around on the net I learned that many people running Lion had a similar problem, but that some of them saw an improvement if they reformatted the external drive.

So I opened Disk Utility so that I could erase what was on the external drive. I followed the directions of both Apple and Glyph (they are all but identical) about erasing, but for some reason I also included the option of erasing the free space on the drive (I picked the simple option). This was taking a while, so I left it to do its business while I went to work. I came home this afternoon to see that the Mac has frozen in screen saver and nothing will budge. No matter how many times I click the mouse or keyboard I can't get it to snap to life. So I decided to turn off the external drive, disconnect it and power down the Mac and restart. Now I can't get any action out of the drive at all. If I have Disk Utility open and plug in the external drive I can see it in the left pane, but clicking on it results in a perpetually spinning beach ball of death.

My understanding is that erasing the free space fills the space with 1s and 0s. Have I inadvertently and completely filled my external drive with useless information to the point where it cannot be accessed…? I though that I was reformatting it - what would be the point in a feature that would render hardware useless (if that is what has happened)? I have tried looking all over the net for an answer to this but I haven't found anyone with my specific problem.Have i just ruined my new drive?

 

[honestone]

From what you said, it seems lie you did everything correctly. Too bad you don't have a more robust Disk Repair/Maintenance program, like either Disk Warrior or TechTool Pro, as either of those fine programs have additional, helpful tools.

Just out of curiosity, is the drive brand new? Also, did you try to first Verify/Repair the disk? And, how was/is it formatted? When you Erase it, make sure to choose the format "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". Also, since the first Erase attempt caused issued, use the slowest Erase Option after you click on Security Options. I believe that for the Lion version of Disk Utility, that option is called "7 pass".

 

[Paulie_Jay]

Hi there,

yes, the drive is brand new. I didn't try verifying the disk to begin with because Glyph drives are already formatted for Mac. Indeed I did use "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" when I decided to to erase.

 

[honestone]

Well, I would first use Disk Utility to Verify and Repair the disk. That will show if there are any issues with the drive. Not sure, though, how much repairing it will need to do. I think if I was you, I would again Erase the Drive, but use the slowest way of doing (the "7 pass" business I mentioned above). (If you had Disk Warrior, it would be a better tool to do those functions (verifying and repairing, plus other, useful tasks)).

 

[Paulie_Jay]

Hi honestone, I would love to do just that, but my problem is that when I connect to the Mac and open Disk Utility I can see the drive listed in the left pane, but when I click on it I get a perpetually spinning beach ball.

I tried again and have left the Mac to sit while I have gone to work in the hopes that by the time I get home some sort of progress may have happened. I will post an update later

 

[Paulie_Jay]

Latest progress - got home after leaving the computer and drive to sort each other out. No joy.

Tried Command + R to reboot - no action.

My next step is that tomorrow I will try hooking the drive up to my friend's iMac just to see what happens. Maybe it's the drive, maybe it's my Mac.

 

[honestone]

Latest progress - got home after leaving the computer and drive to sort each other out. No joy.

Tried Command + R to reboot - no action.

My next step is that tomorrow I will try hooking the drive up to my friend's iMac just to see what happens. Maybe it's the drive, maybe it's my Mac.

How does your machine work without the external drive connected?

 

[Paulie_Jay]

Normally ok - I was backing up the machine because the graphics chip appeared to be on the way out, so i was doing it from safe mode. But I don't think that my Mac is the problem, because I tried it out with my friend's Mac, and exactly the same thing happened. Looks like some sort of problem with the drive.

Thanks to everyone who responded.

 

[honestone]

Normally ok - I was backing up the machine because the graphics chip appeared to be on the way out, so i was doing it from safe mode. But I don't think that my Mac is the problem, because I tried it out with my friend's Mac, and exactly the same thing happened. Looks like some sort of problem with the drive.

Thanks to everyone who responded.

Good news that your machine is fine. You might consider purchasing a Seagate External drive. They work well with Macs. I have used quite a few of them with a number of Macs that I have owned (I have two external ones now), and I can attest as to how well they work. (Definitely steer clear of ones by Western Digital (WD). I have read quite a few horror stories about WD drive and Macs). Even though it might be formatted for Windows when you purchase it, you can use Disk Utility to re-format it.

How much did you pay for your drive? For comparison purposes, Amazon has a 2 TB Seagate External Drive with Firewire 800 for $200:

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-FreeAgent-FireWire-External-STBC2000101/dp/B005IA844Q

Hmm, note that the 3 TB Seagate Drive is $199! Not sure why that is the case.

 

[honestone]

I'd like to add that USB 3.0 (or USB 2.0) external hard drives will be cheaper than ones with Firewire 800. I of course understand your "need for speed" with Firewire 800, as one of my external hard drives (Seagate mechanism inside) has a Firewire 800 interface (as does my Mac Mini), and thus file transfers (and especially backups) do move along rather fast.