Western Digital Hard Drive & Time Machine

I have backed up all my files from my Mac Book on my external hard drive but it has packed in after 5 months and it will not mount.
WD have said to send it to them and they will provide a replacement which is great.
the only issue I have is what happens to all my Mac Book files contained on the hard drive if WD get it to work again ?
Are they able to see these files from my Time Machine because some have some important financial info on them ?
What would you do ?

This is a question I have faced before when I held confidential research data on my TM drive.
Once WD receives the product, they will likely take the hard disk out and try to figure out what went wrong. Perhaps they will be able to fix it with a single part, run a quick format, and send it back into service as a refurbished product. Somebody could receive the drive and potentially recover any data if traces of it still exist on the disks.
I had an external that went the same way yours did and I chose to simply destroy it because I just didn't know what would happen to the data on it. It's all about how important that information is and if you are willing to risk where it could potentially end up. The fact is once you send it off, you do not know what will happen to it.

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    Hi there,
    Thanks for the reply.
    I plugged my usb hard drive in and what looked like time capsule started automatically on my mac. The same hard drive worked perfectly on my laptop pc before, now it connects but isn't visible in my computer.
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    Regards,
    Stephen

  • Macbook with retina display + 500GB western digital hard drive

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  • I have stored everything on my Macbook pro in a external hard drive (Time Machine)  Now that we have "wiped the machine" I am told I can start it over and load ontent--apps, docs, etc from the hard drive, just plug it in, find the time machine and what?

    I have stored everything on my Macbook pro in a external hard drive (Time Machine)  Now that we have "wiped the machine" I am told I can start it over and load ontent--apps, docs, etc from the hard drive, just plug it in, find the time machine and what?    I need to know what to highligh, what to click on. 

    hirogliffix,
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  • Western Digital Hard Drive Firewire Issue

    Hi all,
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    First thing is try the steps in this article by Apple:
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    Let us know what happens.
    Regards,
    Roger

  • Western Digital: Problems with Time Machine

    I have a 1T Western Digital external drive. It is connected Via USB to one of the USB ports on the back of my Mac Pro. It seems to work just fine.
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    Excellent point Linc! Indeed this disk had been attached over the network and I was getting some weird probems and so to simplify things I connected it directly.
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    No one else came up with that, so my compliments!

  • Hard drive failure! New hard drive/Time machine backup/iPhone questions

    Hello,
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    Do you still have the original System Reinstall DVD set that came with your Mac?
    If you created that Lion external drive you have from YOUR Mac, when Lion was installed on it, and it also contains a Recovery HD partition you can use that to boot to the Recovery HD and reinstall Lion on the new drive. And or Clone that external to the new internal drive you installed.
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    scardanelli wrote:
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    I have an early 2011, shipped with Snow Leopard.
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    So Setup Assistant will configure my accounts the same and I don't need to worry about that? That's a relief.
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  • I am trying to move my old external hard drive (time machine ) to a new one

    I have tried to move my old external drive time machine to a new external drive:
    1. have formated the new time external hard drive
    2. I have unlocked and ignored the drives ownership
    3. I have turn of the new hard drive and them tried dragging the file (backups.backupdp) to my new external hard drive
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    What does this mean and how do I fix it?
    Thanks
    Denise

    Although the documentation says you can copy Time Machine backups in the Finder, it's very slow and sometimes doesn't work at all.
    Launch Disk Utility, open the built-in help, and search for the term "Duplicate." Follow the instructions. All existing data on the destination volume will be erased. That shouldn't be a problem, because you don't want to mix backup and non-backup data on the same drive anyway. Turn Time Machine OFF in its preference pane while copying the volume.

  • Time Machine Issue with Western Digital Hard Drive

    I'm running snow leopard with a 300 GB WD External HD using TIme Machine. About every 4 months or so Time Machine gives me an error and says to repair the disk to fix the problem. I go to Disc Utility and try to repair it but it says "Disc cannot be mounted" I try reformatting the drive but it gives me the same error. I have even taken it over to a PC and tried reformatting it there but same issue. Is the HD dead? Time to move on?

    I am having similar issues with Wd drive. I found out is the housing of drive but not drive. How is the external drive connected to your mac? I found out after I bought my My Book and My Book Studio is at fault. Many people in discussion have reported failures. If you are using either one, get another drive. But do not buy another WD My Book or WD My Book Studio. Try an different brand. Like G-Drive is good brand for time machine.
    Lastly and oddly, I do own WD passport hd and it works like charm, no problems with it.

  • Hard Drive Crashed -  New Hard Drive - Time Machine

    So my hard drive crashed. I have the black MacBook A1181. So I decided to get the Western Digital - Scorpio Black hard drive. Its a perfect fit and a huge upgrade from the stock Toshiba hard drive you get. The only problem is, i can't install Mac OSX. I have the disk but I have no Time Machine back up, since i don't have an external hard drive and I wasn't expecting my hard drive would crash any time soon. So what am I supposed to do? Get a time machine back up off my sisters computer or one of my friends computers?

    Hi,
    Do you still have the disc(s) that came with your computer? You'll need this to format the hard drive and install the operating system.

  • External Hard Drive - Time Machine & Windows

    I recently bought a Macbook Pro. However I still have another laptop (w/ Vindows XP) I would like to use. Is it possible for me to use the same external hard drive (Westrn Digital My Book 500 GB) for backing up my pc from time to time and also as the external drive for my time machine backup. If yes, please let me know how. Thanks in advance for your help.

    You can use Apple's Disk Utility, found in the /Applications/Utilities folder.
    Select your hard drive in the left panel, and then click on the Partition tab in the central part fo the Disk Utility window. You can then choose a Volume Scheme of "2 Partitions" (they should be half of the total available space each by default, and can be resized if necessary).
    Select the first partition, and choose "Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)" as the format (this is HFS+). Then you have to click on "Options…", and choose "GUID Partition Table", then click OK (this will make sure the drive has the correct partition map for use with Time Machine).
    Then, select the second partition, and choose the "MS-DOS File System" (FAT32) format. It should have been possible to do it first, but this choice isn't available if you choose the Apple Partition Map (if the drive came formatted for Mac, the APM may have been used). Once you have chosen GUID, it is definitely one of the options.
    Finally, click on "Partition".
    As long as the drive uses the GUID Partition Table or Apple Partition Map, and the volume (partition) used for Time Machine is formatted as HFS+, it should work with Time Machine. You will want to test it to make sure the FAT32 partition works with your PC though.

  • Western digital hard drive doesn't show up anymore

    I bought a Macbook Pro a few months ago and I've been using my Western Digital external USB hard drive with up until now with no problems. Then today for some reason, I turn my computer on and the drive doesn't show up anymore. It doesn't show up in disk utility either. I've rebooted a few times but no luck. I inserted a flash drive and it mounts ok so it's not the USB port. I even switched usb cables just in case the cable was bad. Any suggestions?

    Hi there
    Sorry to hear you are having trouble with your Mac.
    Is the ext HD a powered drive (needs AC power to run) or portable? (smaller, doesn't need to be plugged in to AC)
    If its AC powered, check that all the usual lights are lit up on it (flashing activity light, power light etc), if not, then you would need to contact WD.
    You can also try resetting the SMC & PRAM, as I have seen this cause a HD to not mount before.
    Cheers

  • External Hard drive/Time Machine backup error message

    On a sidenote, I posted a question a week ago about what external hard drive would be compatible with my Macbook, and I so happened to get a WD My Passport Studio hard drive as an unsuspecting gift, so I didn't have to buy one.
    Anyways, I started the backup on this hard drive and I had an error message: "Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume." I searched this on the Apple Support Communities and found that I wasn't the only one who had this problem. So, I came upon one discussion that suggested downloading Time Machine Buddy (link:http://pondini.org/TM/A1.html) (link that prompted me to download: http://pondini.org/TM/C3.html). I downloaded it and found out that the error was occurring in my Library folder, specifically in the folder entitled "db" in the "Receipts" folder. There's one file in the "db" folder entitled "a.receiptdb" <----can someone please explain what the heck this is??? Lol. Anyways, I decided to exclude the whole "Receipts" folder from being backed up and now my external hard drive is backing up my files fine. My MAIN question is this: What is wrong with my receipts folder that is causing the error?
    P.S. here are the error messages in the Time Machine Buddy log:
    Error: (-36) SrcErr:YES Copying /Library/Receipts/db/a.receiptdb to (null)
    Error: (-36) SrcErr:NO Copying /Library/Receipts/db/a.receiptdb to /Volumes/My Passport Studio/Backups.backupdb/Josh Brew’s MacBook/2012-01-29-162450.inProgress/D9F83053-7FE1-4EBE-991A-F400C35D37CC/Macin tosh HD/Library/Receipts/db
    Stopping backup.
    Error: (-8062) SrcErr:NO Copying /Library/Receipts/db/a.receiptdb to /Volumes/My Passport Studio/Backups.backupdb/Josh Brew’s MacBook/2012-01-29-162450.inProgress/D9F83053-7FE1-4EBE-991A-F400C35D37CC/Macin tosh HD/Library/Receipts/db
    Copied 246 files (277.4 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
    Copy stage failed with error:11
    Backup failed with error: 11
    As you can see, iy is located in the "db" folder. I have no idea what's wrong. Thank you for your time! It is MUCH appreciated.

    The connection to 10.6.7 may just be a coincidence.  I had a similar problem with a disk and was about to throw it out but decided to try a different USB cable.  That fixed the problem and the drive is still in use.
    Try a new cable if you have not already done so.
    Dave

  • External Hard Drive/Time Machine 101

    I was using a 500 GB external hard drive with my MacBook Pro. I cloned my hard drive to the external hard drive, then used the remaining space to store videos, images, etc. When my aging MacBook Pro finally crashed, I was able to boot up the cloned drive and work with it.
    I now have a new MacBook Pro with a bigger hard drive (750 GB, I think). I also bought a 2 terabyte external hard drive (My Book for Mac), planning on doing the same thing - cloning my hard drive, then using the remaining free space to store extra stuff.
    However, I discovered that my new external hard drive is much more sophisticated than the last one. It gives me the option of using Time Machine or automatically copying all my files to the external drive. So I'd like to go back to square one, find out what my options are and figure out the best strategy.
    First, if I use Time Machine to back up my files, will they effectively create a clone that I can boot up? (I've never used Time Machine before.) If so, then I'm thinking I might not partition my new hard drive. Instead, I would just let Time Machine back up my files. If it creates a 1,200 GB clone, then I could copy videos and images to the remaining 800 GB of hard drive space.
    If Time Machine doesn't create a bootable clone, then I'll probably just do what I've been doing - use a program like Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my hard drive, then use the remaining space to store graphics. However, I wonder if I could still get by without partitioning my new hard drive. With two terabytes, it seems like it might be more efficient to just leave it unpartitioned and copy things into it as needed.
    Any tips?
    Thanks.

    Time Machine does not create bootable clones. It does not even create a bootable backup. If that's what you prefer then do not use Time Machine.
    If you use Time Machine then you must allocate at least twice as much space for the backups than the capacity of the drive you are backing up. A 2 TB backup drive would be suitable for a 1 TB main drive or smaller.
    If you plan to create a bootable backup, then partition the backup drive with one partition the size required for the clone. Then use the other partition for you additional storage neeeds.

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