External hard drive corruption
I have a 512GB USB 3.0 SSD attached to my macbook air which stores all my media files for iTunes. On several occassions after rebooting the machine the disk has been corrupted and the disk utility can't repair it. So I end up having to restores the files from a backup (a 2 hour process). A couple questions as I'm new to the mac world:
1) Does the mac disable lazy writes for external media? If not, is there a setting to force synchronous writes to external drives?
2) I'm not sure why the disk is corrupting in the first place. I'm not pulling cables. I'm doing a Restart or System Shutdown and when the machine restarts, the drive sometimes gets corrupted.
3) I do keep iTunes running all the time (which connects to this drice), so I wonder if iTunes isn't shutting down properly prior to the system reboot and that is corrupting the drive directory.
4) I don't think this is related to the SSD, but perhaps it is. I did flash the drive (an OCZ Vertex 4) with the latest firmware, but that didn't fix it.
Just wondering if anyone else has seen symptoms like these and how they might have fixed them. If this keeps happening, I may move to a non-SSD drive and see if that fixes the problem.
Any help would be appreciated.
Turns out it looks like it was QuickTime causing the issues. When I quit iTunes it released its lock on the drive as expected. However, I was also playing movies (with Quicktime) and QuickTime hadn't ended. It was still running in the background event through I had shut it down (using the Red button). So when the machine rebooted or shutdown, the open drive pointer would cause a directory corruption.
Being new to the Mac it didn't occur to me right away that QuickTime was still running in the background and keeping a pointer open to the drive.
So perhaps you can answer me this: How would I have known QuickTime was still running? It wasn't on the dock. What is the command to see all running programs? The only way I was able to shut down QuickTime without actually knowing it was running was to launch it and then do a Quit via the QuickTime menu. OS X complained that it couldn't unmount the drive but didn't give any reference to the locking program. I just guessed correctly it was QuickTime given that I had viewed a video.
Similar Messages
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My usb external hard drive got corrupt or something and I cant see any of my files. I tried to use the repair function of the disk utility but that didnt help.
You might try Disk Warrior (Alsoft software), or if it's more than just a directory problem, Data Rescue II from http://www.prosoftengineering.com/products/datarescueinfo.php Has saved me a few times now...
Jerry -
External hard drive corrupted after trying to fix it, in macbook Disk utilities
hello,
After fixing my macbook internal drive with disk utilities, i put to verify my WD external hard drive,that acuse me some errors.
Well i don´t no why but i put the disk utility run for de WD external drive. A few time later , shows up a message that the disk couln't fixed, to format them.
After that my external WD wasn't recognize by any computer, i think the modules of the disk was corruped.
Does any one knows how can i invert ou fix the problem, without formating?
Thank youBalibaleia wrote:
Does any one knows how can i invert ou fix the problem, without formating?
I assume your asking because you have data on that drive to recover first.
Your going to need to install something like Data Rescue on your computer's boot drive, then connect the problem drive and another external drive with enough space to send all the recovered files too.
Data Rescue takes a long time, it reads the 1's and 0's of the files themselves off the drive, not listening to anything else, it will cost you $100, but that's the going price for software like this.
The option if that doesn't work is to take the internal hard drive out of the external case and use a SATA to USB adapter cable $40, then try the above Data Rescue method again.
If you don't care about any data on the drive, then just toss it. Drives are cheap. -
MacBook Pro -- external hard drive corruption -- AND hanging computer?
Since purchasing a 17" MacBook Pro, I've had serious problems with directory corruption on three of my external firewire hard drives (80 and 100 G FireLite Pocket drives and a 400 G Lacie drive). About 2 weeks ago, the 80 G drive (with most of my critical files) disappeared from the desktop. Disk Utilities returned with a message that it was repairable. Tech Tools supposedly fixed it, but the drive icon shortly disappeared from the desktop. This time, Disk Utilities "repaired" it, but it was the kiss of death. After this, plugging in the drive caused the computer to hang indefinitely. I could no longer run any repair or data rescue software. Once this problem occurs, I can switch firewire cables and computers, and the computers still crash/hang. A techy at work managed to rescue the files and replace them on the disk (this required other hardware, a PC, and some software he downloaded(?)). Two weeks later, the problem happened again. However, this time, it was the 80 G and my 400 G backup drive. Now, all of my originals and backups (for the past 2 years, since I did my last CD/DVD backups) are (hopefully) temporarily unavailable. My 100 G drive started to do the same thing. However, I purchased and downloaded a copy of Disk Warrior, which seems to have rescued this disk.
I've had these drive for between 3 and 5 years, with little or absolutely no trouble. Then, after getting the MacBook Pro, I'm encountering really serious problems.
Is the MacBook Pro at fault? (I've returned to my PowerBook G4 until this issue is resolve).
What causes such severe disk directory damage that causes my computer to hang?
How can I recover my files (critically important to my work, some of which is on a tight deadline) without having to run to the vastly overworked/underpaid techy in my place of employment)?
My conversation with an Apple Tech was much less than satisfying. In fact, he seemed to portray a state of denial about the MacBook Pro having any problems, even though the web is full of complaints. What's up Apple? Are you beginning to backslide yet again?Welcome To Discussions JeffBloom!
I'm sorry to hear that you are having problems with your MBP, but you have posted your inquiry, in the Discussions Forum, that is intended for discourse about the use of Apple Discussions.
You will get more focused attention to your issue, if you select a more appropriate location from this page Discussions Forum Home.
For example,
From the Forum Home Page, select the Category MacBook Pro.
Then choose an appropriate MBP Forum, such as Using your MacBook Pro.
On Forum pages, there is an option to Post New Topic.
Good Luck!
ali b -
External hard drive corruption issues
Hey folks. Really not sure what the best place would be for my question, but I'll try here.
I have a 4 year old LaCie external HD with a 160GB capacity. It stores my iPhoto and iTunes libraries for my iBook, along with a few other bits and pieces.
About a year ago, I noticed some of my files were corrupted and couldn't be played. Whenever I tried to open one of those files, the drive would start knocking and whatever program was trying to access the file would need to be Force Quit. Hoping to solve the issue, I moved the data,(or course, getting stuck on corrupted files along the way) erased and reformatted the drive and moved the data back. Unfortunately, that didn't solve the problem.
I have the data backed up on another, newer external drive, but I'm wondering if there's a way to isolate the bad sectors in the old drive so they can't be written to anymore? Should I use Disk Utility and repair the disk?
I know the drive's old and could fail at any time, but I'd like to keep using it as long as possible. Also, when it does finally fail, could I just purchase another hard drive and place it in the enclosure? I suppose I should also note that the FireWire 400 ports don't work on the enclosure. I'm sure it's not a defect, as I accidentally dropped the drive shortly after I'd purchased it. That fall is probably the cause of the corruptions as well =/
The USB port works fine and I haven't been able to test the FireWire 800.
Thanks for any advice y'all have!
~LyssaYour drive sounds very sick. I am not sure how likely it is but I would be concerned about your OS becoming seriously corrupted and possibly unbootable as a result of continuing to use this bad external drive.
It would be better if you could test it connected to a non-critical computer.
Do you know the drive specification? - not the make of the box.
Many drives self-repair and also communicate likely future difficulties to the OS but eventually you come to the end of this process.
I am not sure if disk utilities any longer map out bad sectors. Years ago I used a mounting screw that was too long and damaged the magnetic surface. In those days you could manually map out the bad sectors. I then put partitions each side of the mapped out sectors and continued to use the drive for many years.
More recently I had a drive with an intermittent power connection. However even after repairing this and reformatting the drive was never very reliable.
Good drives are relatively inexpensive. You could try a new drive in your box. I always advise buying server quality drives normally identified by a 5 year guarantee. I prefer Western Digital but Seagate also make reliable drives. -
Time Machine backups corrupt or external hard drive failure?
My goal today was to upgrade my MacBook Pro's HD, and to restore my system from my latest Time Machine backup which resides on an external hard drive. I installed the new hard drive, formatted it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and selected Restore System From Backup from Utilities. The system restore was five minutes form finishing when I received an error that the system restore could not be completed, and that I should restart my machine and try again. I did as instructed, but once the system restore process began, the screen went gray, and I was told that the Snow Leopard install could not be completed.
Before beginning the process a third time, I ran Disk Utility from the Snow Leopard install disc and attempted to verify and repair the external (Time Machine) hard drive. The Time Machine hard drive could not be verified, nor could it be repaired. I popped in the old hard drive into my MacBook Pro, booted Snow Leopard, and ran Disk Utility, and tried again repairing the Time Machine hard drive. Here is the log of the error I received:
2010-12-29 21:14:30 -0800: Verify and Repair volume “Time Machine”
2010-12-29 21:14:30 -0800: Starting repair tool:
2010-12-29 21:14:31 -0800: Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
2010-12-29 21:14:31 -0800: Checking extents overflow file.
2010-12-29 21:14:31 -0800: Checking catalog file.
2010-12-29 21:20:22 -0800: Invalid node structure
2010-12-29 21:20:22 -0800: The volume Time Machine could not be verified completely.
2010-12-29 21:20:22 -0800: Volume repair complete.
2010-12-29 21:20:22 -0800: Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
2010-12-29 21:20:22 -0800: Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
2010-12-29 21:20:22 -0800:
2010-12-29 21:20:22 -0800: Disk Utility stopped repairing “Time Machine”: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
Do these errors indicate that my Time Machine backups located in the Backups.backupdb are corrupt, or is the external hard drive corrupt and failing?
The Time Machine backups are on a Maxtor OneTouch, and from what I've read, they're prone to an early demise. I've also recently noticed that my Time Machine backups started slowing. For example, I would plug in my external hard drive and if 1.3GB needed to be backed up, it would stall at 300 MB before jumping to 700 MB, stall again, then jump to 900 MB. That could be a sign of a failing hard drive, correct? If the external hard drive is failing, I can purchase a new eternal hard drive then copy the Backups.backupdb to the new hard drive, correct?
However, if Backups.backupdb is corrupt, then from what I understand, I would have to start fresh. I would prefer to not start fresh unless there's no other option, as I would be losing almost three years worth of Time Machine backups.
Any guidance is appreciated. Thanks!ali_baba7 wrote:
2010-12-29 21:20:22 -0800: Invalid node structure
2010-12-29 21:20:22 -0800: Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
It's possible a heavy-duty 3rd-party utility such as +Disk Warrior+ can fix that. It's about $100, and there's no guarantee, but it's probably a good investment for the future.
Do these errors indicate that my Time Machine backups located in the Backups.backupdb are corrupt, or is the external hard drive corrupt and failing?
The structure of the file system is damaged.
That may have been caused by the disk beginning to fail, but there's no way to tell for sure until you erase and reformat the disk and try to use it.
I've also recently noticed that my Time Machine backups started slowing. For example, I would plug in my external hard drive and if 1.3GB needed to be backed up, it would stall at 300 MB before jumping to 700 MB, stall again, then jump to 900 MB. That could be a sign of a failing hard drive, correct?
It could, but it could also be whatever's wrong with the file structure.
If the external hard drive is failing, I can purchase a new eternal hard drive then copy the Backups.backupdb to the new hard drive, correct?
No. You can't copy corrupted backups. They're all linked together, like a database, so if anything's damaged, the whole set is suspect, and can't be copied.
There are a couple of options:
If the disk is physically ok, and the directory damage was recent, you might be able to restore from an earlier backup. But since you noticed problems some time ago, the damage may not be recent.
Or, you might be able to get up and running by just installing OSX from your SL Install disk (and the 10.6.5 "combo" update). You'll be missing whatever wasn't restored in that last 5 minutes or so. Things are restored in the same order they're listed by the Finder, so it will be the last things in the last user account. You should be able to figure out where it stopped, check or delete the very last file (likely incomplete) and selectively restore as many of the remaining things as you can, via the "Star Wars" display.
Just to make things more difficult, if the disk is failing, the more you use it, the more likely it is to get worse or fail completely.
So your safest bet may be to install OSX, then download and install the 10.6.5 "combo" update. Info and download available at: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1324 Be sure to do a +Repair Permissions+ via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) afterwards. Then recover what you can. -
Iphoto 11 does not recognise iphoto 9 library stored on external hard drive
Hi anyone,
Been tormented for a full week now where I have "lost" nearly 100Gb of phots. It is driving me insane! I have tried all the possible remedies - the Comd Option functions on iphoto start up, the rebuild, the rebuild on iphot manager, changing the "show package contents" options - but nothing.
The problem. I recently upgraded my mac and with it the software - going from iphoto 09 to iphoto 11. I had been using a smaller library (15Gb) stored on my Mac which migrated fine. The issue was when I tried to connect into my external library that things went haywire. The photographs on the external harddrive show as black squares on iphoto 11, sometimes it briefly flashes the underneath image, but none of them are able to open. The migrated images are fine.
I've tried to then create copies of my external hard drive library but even when I play around with these copies the problem persists. I am terrified that I've corrupted the parent. The external library still opens fine on my old machine on iphoto 09. When I look at "show package contents" under preview on the iphoto 11 mac, the images come up fine so I know they are (at least the majority, there seems to be some phots missing!).
I am at the very limit of my technical ability and sanity. I don't have a time machine backup, my parent library isn't fully backed up so if I revert back to a stored master I will lose a couple of months of photos which included last summers Olympics.
The other threads don't seem to cover this exact problem - has anyone else suffered? Any remedies would be gratefully appreciated and would move me down the stress ladder by at least a couple of rungs.
Kind regards,
John
iphoto 11 iphoto11 iLife11 iLife_11 iphoto09 iphoto_09 iphoto9 external hard drive corrupted blank photographs disappearedWell here's the first problem:
The drive is in MS-DOS (FAT) format (a 500Gb Lacie).
iPhoto needs to have the Library sitting on disk formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Users with the Library sitting on disks otherwise formatted regularly report issues including, but not limited to, importing, saving edits and sharing the photos. So, get the Library onto an appropriately formatted disk.
If you're thinking of reformatting that disk, remember that doing so will erase it, and so make sure you back it up first.
I would try open the Library from an appropriately formatted disk. If the issues persist them try the rebuild with Library Manager again. -
How do i repair or recover data from a corrupt USB external hard drive that does not show up on my Mac desktop or disk utility?
Last night i was using my external hard drive, for some reason the folder just closed and i couldn't find it on my desktop.
After googling solutions, i found it in the disk utilities, i clicked on the 'repair' button many times, but it said the 'error...' message.
So i ejected it to try again, now when i connect the USB external hard drive it doesn't show up on my desktop or disk utilities.
I really just want to either repair or recover the data on it because it literally has everything (documents, work files, photos etc) on it,
I downloaded an application to recover my files but it needs the USB to at least show up.recognise it which mine doesn't.
I know i should've backed it up on another USB, this definitely teaches me for next time to back up all my files.
Are the files lost forever or can i recover them by going to a shop or using a software?Thank you for responding.
This might sound stupid since i'm not really knowledgeable with Macs,
but since all my files were moved from my mac computer to the external hard drive,
is it possible to recover those files through my Mac - like recovering deleted files? -
My aperture library lives on an external hard drive that is corrupt and I can not locate the library. I do have it backed up with TM. How do I safely restore the library from TM to my laptop? I am using the newest version of aperture on my macbook pro.
Hello Sandra,
The article linked below details how to go about restoring items from Time Machine in Snow Leopard.
Mac OS X 10.6: Recovering items using Time Machine and Spotlight
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH6379
Sincerely,
Allen -
A library on my hard drive became corrupted, so I over-wrote it from an external hard drive. When I now access the library on my hard drive, many of the images are vertical, and cannot be rotated other than one at a time. Ideas to correct this?
You had already done "Repair" and "Rebuild"? These usually takes scores of minutes or hours.
Does the Library on your external drive work from the external drive? Navigate to it in Finder and double-click the name.
If it does, delete the problem Library, empty the System Trash, reboot, Verify your system disk using Disk Utility (and might as well repair permissions while you're at it), reboot, test the external drive Library once more to confirm it works properly, then close it and copy the Library to your system drive. When the copying is done, double-click the Library (now on the system drive) and see what you get. -
Itunes backed up on external hard drive now corrupt
My 2000+ songs were backed up on an external hard drive. It suddenly gave me a corrupt error message. Ran the check disk. It advised me that I needed to /fix to correct problem, but it wouldn't accept that command. Went to Geek Squad & they tell me drive is empty, but for a fee they can send it off for more extensive recovery. For whatever reason, some of my iTunes files are also on my 13-year-old Windows drive, but not all. It's random music, too. Some recently purchased, some not. Trying to explain this to an Apple person has proven to be difficult. I had already tried all the "tricks" they have suggested.
Half of my library is "purchased" music, but trying to retrieve them from the iTunes Store is not happening. It still thinks they are downloaded. The songs that get the exclamation points then clear when I exit iTunes & then restart it. Then when I try to play them I get the exclamation point.
Any other advice?
Thanks!I honestly thought they were backed up, along with a few hundred pictures. I actually went in and manually did a back-up a couple of months ago, because it didn't appear that it was following the schedule & auto-backing up. I'm just a 55 y/o, non-computer-literate mom, who now has adult children & am doing this computer thing on my own!! My computer is really old. Bought it when Windows ME came out!! HA! Saving for a new one, but our daughter's wedding this summer got in the way.
I thought about the delete-thing. Wasn't sure if that would work. Going to try (test) that now.
Thanks for your quick response & help. -
The cable to the external hard drive that houses my iphoto library was accidentally disconnected while the library was open and up on the screen. We plugged it back in, but now the screen is frozen. Has anyone experienced this before? If I force quit, will I corrupt and lose access to the library on the external hard drive?
Shutdown the Mac. Disconnect and power off the external drive (if it has its own power supply). Reconnect the external drive and power on (if applicable). Boot Mac. If the external drive is not reading properly, open Disk Utility, select external drive, run Repair Disk.
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i have LR5 on a mac book pro with a WD external hard drive with my with my LR5 images . my problem is my external drive is corrupted .i was told by apple that my macshow the hard drive is there but it is not moumting and have to be reformat. i have to use recovery data to save my images on my external before i can refomat.iam willing to lose my images on my extenal hard drive but i would like to know can i erase my LR5 images and start over or delete LR5 and download it again
Simply start a new catalog:
File >> New Catalog
Choose a new name and save.
When the empty catalog launches you are ready to start over. -
how do you separate corrupt files from good files on a external hard drive importing them to your macbook pro
You open them one at a time into thier respective programs and see if they are good or not and then send the bad ones to the Trash and the good ones to the appropriate folder.
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Corrupted Master File Table on External Hard-Drive(NTFS)
You could try some data recover software, it should be able to copy the data off for you (as long as there are no physical problems with the HD). Recuva is free, Rstudio is also very good. You will need to have enough space available on another drive to restore the data to.
Best of luck with it! :)First off I want to apologize if I sound inexperienced, this is my first time posting on Spiceworks and I have only been in IT for a year as an intern.So here is my problem, I have an external hard-drive that I use as a secondary drive for storage. The other day I went to get something off it when I noticed that I could not access the drive through file explorer. It came up with an error saying "Data error (cycle redundancy check).".
I proceeded to google the problem since I have not seen the error before and found many forums telling me to run a check disk on the drive with /f to fix the errors on the disk. I run the chkdsk and I get the following error"Corrupt master file table. Windows will attempt to recover master file table from disk. Windows cannot recover master file table. CHKDSK aborted".
I then booted my machine into a...
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