Corrupt external drive

I came back to my computer last night to find it wouldn't come out of sleep mode.
When I force rebooted it, it hung before getting to the Apple logo, turns out the problem was with my external drive acting as a time machine.
I'm all back up and running, however when I plugged in my drive it said it couldn't initialise it. After several hours of trying to get it to work I decided to give up and wipe it. I wiped it but it failed at the last block.
Now I can't get it to be detected by my Mac at all. Tried plugging it into a Windows PC which recognises it, but fails to mount it due to drive incompatibilities
Any suggestions?

Erase the external disk in the PC. Open Disk Management, right-click the partition of the external disk at the bottom and select Format. You must erase it in exFAT or FAT32

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IMac repeatedly corrupting external drive directories in sleep mode

When putting my iMac into sleep mode or when it goes into sleep mode after a period of inuse I keep getting the "improper eject" message. After waking the iMac I sometimes get the "disc not initialized" message and discover that the directory has been lost. It's happened to 4 different external drives in the space of a month.
The disks are connected via firewire 800. I have recently added a firewire hub but the problem was happening prior to and post this addition. I can't think of any other changes I've made to my set up that may be causing this behaviour. Previously I've had no problems of this nature in the 2 years since I purchased the iMac.
The drives run without this problem when connected to my MacBookPro.
Does anyone have any ideas or suggextions for running any diagnostic tests I coulod run?
Thanks in advance.

I have the same issue on my 2011 MBP. I have three FW800 drives daisy chained together. The first drive in the series disconnects when my computer goes to sleep and I get the error stating the drive wasn't dismounted properly. The other two drives stay connected fine. I don't have to close the lid, it will do this after the computer goes to sleep based on my power saving settings.
The drive that disconnects is a 500GB G-Drive. The second drive is a 1 TB Hitachi drive mounted in a IcyDock. The third drive is a 500GB G-Mini Drive.
I had the same three drives connected to my previous 2007 MBP and never had the issue. The issue started when I purchased my new MBP in July. My software is up to date and I'm use OS X Lion.

Corrupt External Drive & Reinstall

I recently had to junk an external hard drive I was using to run iTunes and store my mp3s. Recovering the music wasn't an issue as I had it backed up in another location, but I can't un-install or re-install iTunes without the former drive pludded into the usb port! I recieve the error messages:
"Error 1237. Invalid Drive F:\"
and
"Error 1603 Fatal Error During Installation"
What next???

That’s what I was afraid of….
Usually, programs are installed to the primary drive (C:) in Windows systems. It appears that the uninstaller is trying to access a drive that is not there and fatally failing to complete.
Any way to attach the old drive just for the uninstall? Or set up another drive to be viewed as F: in its place?
Other than that, it may need some registry editing to remove the software. That's beyond me. I will try to recruit a more learned mind to assist.

JPEG Corruption post transfer over USB External Drive (usb2.0)

Hello
I have two external drives, both support firewire400/800 and USB2.
On the firewire 400 settings no issue at all.
Previously on PPC powerbook, I used firewire 800 and no issues at all.
While waiting for my expresscard34-firewire800 to arrive this week, I am using the USB2 port on the macbook pro to trasnfer a jpeg library (c24gb) to and from, using either the internal 7200rpm sata drive on the machine, or also from the connected firewire 400 lacie 1tb bigger disc.
Whichever solution I use to copy from, all JPEG's that go via the USB2 port on the macbook, any usb2.0 port, get corrupted. I can open in aperture/bridge, or even testing in vista beta or xp and the files are corrupt. But if I transfer via the firewire 400, all is fine.
I can switch around the external drives, I have deleted all partitions and reformatted, and even gone through both fat32/osx-journaled options to no avail. Weird or what?
My only thinking option here is to create a .dmg 24gb file of the whole folder, and move that across, but that is just daft.
P.s. transferring any other type of data works perfectly fine, e.g. .mp3/.doc.xls etc.
Any thoughts on this weird one.
thks in advance!
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Hello,
The iMac G4 17" 1GHz only has USB1.1 so it doesn't matter that the MyBook is USB2.0 you'll only transfer at USB1.1 speeds (1.5MBps). As there is no way to add USB2.0 to the iMac G4 ≤1GHz you need to look at a Firewire drive like the MyBook Pro/Premium; incidentally, both of these come with back-up software too.
The iMac G4 can't boot from USB so if your internal drive fails you can't boot the iMac like you could on a Firewire drive.
Personally I do have my MyBook Pro partitioned in to a back-up space which matches my internal hard drive and a separate media file partition.
BTW you have posted in the Intel iMac forum. The users here will be less familiar with the specific issues that iMac (Flat Panel)s may suffer. I'd advise that you post future queries in the iMac G4 forum:
G4 (aka Flat Panel): Intel:
Click image to go to correct forum
regards
mrtotes

HT4527 While upgrading my operating system to Windows 7, I backed up everything on external drive. However the drive is corrupt and lost my music. Since I have an iPhone I had the music there as well, I synced it and it erased everything. How can I get

While upgrading to Windows 7, I backed up everything on a external drive; it became corrupt so I could not access my music library for iTunes. However, I had my music on my iPhone as well so I assumed it will sync. It did sync but not the way I thought, so I lost years of music and favorite uploaded CDs. How can I recover it? I lknow you can acess iTunes from 4 computers so the database is there somewhere. Unfortunately all I was able to recover is the music purchased from iTunes directly. It makes me wonder about the iCloud product; if I cannot find my music what is my incentive to buy iCloud? It seems like they are starting to charge for something that they provided before freely, then messed up the updates and software so that we need to pay for this service now.

iCloud never stored music. That is what the iTunes Match service is for.
The only way to get back non-iTunes-purchased music is to import them to your new iTunes library however you did it on your old computer.

Time Machine corrupting external USB hard drives

In February I installed two Mac Minis running 10.8 Server. Each machine had an external hard drive connected to it.
Sometime over the Labor Day weekend, both drives stopped working. When I came in Tuesday, each machine had a message on the screen that the Time Machine drive had been improperly ejected. I powered down both drives and then powered them back up. Here's what is going on with each machine:
MACHINE #1:
Has a Western Digital 1TB drive formatted as OS X Extended Journaled.
Disk Utility is able to see the external drive; however, whenever I try to back up, I get the message "Time Machine couldn't complete the backup... Files can't be copied onto the backup disk because it appears to be read-only."
In Disk Utility, if I select the partition and Verify Disk, I get the message "Disk Utility stopped verifying Backup. Couldn't unmount disk."
When I try to reformat the drive, I get the message "Disk Erase failed. Disk Erase failed with the error: Couldn't unmount disk."
The Time Machine System Preference pane shows "None" for both oldest and latest backup times; however, I am able to enter Time Machine and see files going back to April.
MACHINE #2
Has a Segate 2TB drive formatted as OX X Extended Journaled.
Initially Disk Utility would recognize this drive about 50% of the time. I would power it down and back up. Sometimes it would appear in Disk Utility, sometimes it wouldn't. Whenever I would try to verify or repair this disk, it would immediately unmount and I would get the message that the disk was not ejected properly. When I try to backup using Time Machine, TM acts like it is preparing to back up and then the disk disappears from Disk Utility and from the Desktop and I get the message that The disk was not ejected properly.
This machine showed it was last backed up on September 1.
After fiddling with it, I was able to format the drive. After formatting the drive, I started a Time Machine backup and the drive unmounted again.
It seems that some event over the weekend caused both drives to corrupt. There was no sign of a power-outtage. Can anyone suggest how I can track down what caused this? Would there have been a maintenance script that would have run on Sept 1 that could have messed both drives up? Some other system event? Losing the data isn't a big deal. I just want to make sure I prevent whatever caused this in the future. Any tips would be much appreciated.

Yeah, I don't know much about the logs. I flipped through some using Console but didn't really know what I was looking for. I was hopeing to see an event that was followed by a notice that the USB drives had been improperly ejected since that was a message I received on both machines.
Since both machines were affected at the same time it seems logical it would be a scheduled event or, as you suggested, some power issue.

Opied files got corrupted in USB3 external drives connected to Macbook Pro, how to fix it?

I use USB3 connected external hard drives in my Macbook Pro mid 2012 (Yosemite 10.10.1) frequently. I had no problem until two months ago. This week I noticed a lot of corrupted files in one ext drive connected to USB3 port. Luckily I have a backup, and I copied back the files. But the files copied recently were also corrupted even though source files are fine. I spent a whole day trying to fix it using different methods of copy and options, e.g. erasing the drive, using cp, rsync, ditto and a combination of their options. I figured out that if I use cp or cp - R for copying single file or folder, it works fine, but using of rsync, ditto or recursive cp or finder's drag and drop result into a lot of corrupted files in the target drive. This is not the problem of external drive. I was surprised to notice that all files are copied perfectly when I used a old macbook (2008 model, it only has USB2 port, and OSX Mavericks). Since I have almost 2TB data to write, USB2 is very slow. I want to use USB3 of Macbook Pro 2012, but I am very disappointed to find out that USB3 in Yosemite is causing the trouble, writing out corrupted files. If anyone has a solution to this problem, or a second thought, Please suggest.
External hard drive Western Digital My passport.
Disk is formatted to Paragon NTFS

My guess here is there is some issue with the use of Paragon NTFS. Perhaps updating it or using another NTFS driver (like Tuxera, or its free alternative NTFS-3G) will work. All in all, using NTFS in write mode with these options will be using a non-supported approach for accessing your drive, which could lead to odd problems if Apple makes a change that interferes with the functions of these drivers. At other times, such drivers use inherently less stable approaches (such as the FUSE environment) that could lead to problems if not formatted correctly.
If your drive is working, and the formatting is checked out properly in Windows and other systems, then I'd suggest you check on your NTFS driver and update or replace it. Alternatively, if you only use the drive with your Mac, then consider formatting it to Apple's native Mac OS Extended. Lastly, if you use the drive with multiple operating systems, then consider using FAT32 or ExFAT as the format, as these are fully supported in OS X (unlike NTFS, which is only supported for reading).

Copied files got corrupted in USB3 external drives connected to Macbook Pro, how to fix it?

I use USB3 connected external hard drives in my Macbook Pro (Yosemite 10.10.1) frequently. I had no problem until two months ago. This week I noticed a lot of corrupted files in one drive. Luckily I have a backup, and I copied the files. But the files copied recently were mostly corrupted even though source files are fine. I spent a whole day trying with different options, e.g. erasing the drive, using cp, rsync, ditto etc. I figured out that if I copy single file or folder using cp, the copied files are fine, but rsync, ditto or recursive cp or finder's drag and drop results into a lot of corrupted files. I thought this was the hardware related issue of the external drive. But, I was surprised to notice that all files copied without any problem when I used a old macbook (only has USB2 port, and still use Mavericks). Since I have almost 2TB data to write, USB2 is very slow. I am very disappointed to find out that USB3 in Yosemite has caused all these troubles. If anyone has a solution to this problem, Please suggest.
External hard drive Western Digital My passport.
Disk is formatted to Paragon NTFS

It's good to hear the Macbook Pro & the disk is capable of working correctly. The next test would be to try a clean install of OS X & repeat the copy guess. Adding third party drivers for write support makes the picture a little cloudy IMO.
I'm not really sure what else to suggest other than doing some tests & then taking that data to an Apple store. If you are lucky the genius may follow up on it, or if you submit it as bug reports Apple may follow up on it.
http://apple.com/feedback/
Good luck with it, if you want some other ideas post back

Corrupt Video On External Drive

Hi
When importing video from my Cam Corder to the main drive on my iMac the video imports perfectly every time. But when I import to my external drive there is sometimes fractions of the clips that look corrupted. Its just for maybe half a second of blocky video then it goes back to normal. I've imported the same footage a few times now with different results. The corrupted parts are different each time and its only for less than a second.
To be hones the external drive is 500 GB in an Xcraft case and is quite old. I'm using to see if my machine is fast enough and see if its worth buying a new drive.
Could this be bad sectors on my drive? Or just the machine failing to import correctly due to transfer speeds of external drives? Could I maybe import to the main drive and then copy over would this help?
Is there an app to check for bad sectors? I've Used Disk Utility bit al it says is the disk is fine but the check only took a few seconds so that obviously did not check all the sectors.
Any help appreciated.

Modern camcorders generate a new file for each clip you shoot. You can load the clips into iMovie either directly from the camera, from the SDHC card or from a copy of the SDHC card on a hard disk.
Which OS version and iMovie version do you have?
There are some constraints on the video formats that can be imported that depend on this.
Geoff.

Corrupt external Hard drive

I tried to use Time machine on Mac, so that my external Hard drive was the back up. Unfortunately, I pulled the cable out too soon before it was finished and now the external drive must be corrupt as the Mac won't recognise it. Is there anything I can do so that the Mac recognises the external hard drive ?

Do a Repair Disk on the drive, using Disk Utilities. If that doesn't work, you will either have to get stronger stuff such as Disk Warrior, TechTool Pro, etc. Or bite the bullet and reformat the drive, hence losing all the contents permanently.

I seem to have a corrupted iTunes library. I can't transfer the library to an external drive. The transfer hangs up on a specific tune. Anybody have any ideas. I am running OS 10.6 w/ a 2Ghz Duel core processor.

I seem to have a corrupted iTunes library. I can't transfer the library to an external drive. The transfer hangs up on a specific tune. Anybody have any ideas. I am running OS 10.6 w/ a 2Ghz Duel core processor.

Old Barry wrote:
via a usb connestion
So you are copyinbg the entire /Music/iTunes? folder to another drive by copying in a Finder window?

Restoring iTunes Library from corrupted external hard drive

I had my iTunes library and all the associated files on an external hard drive. This was working fine until I plugged this external hard drive into my TV to watch a movie. When I plugged my external hard drive back into my Macbook it is no longer readable, the file structure was corrupted and it will not mount.
I got a program to recover the files and this seemed to work. It was able to recover all the files however not the same file structure or file names etc. Just the files. So now I have all my files back but they are all sequentially named and stored in folders based on file type i.e. not the same folder structure or location as before. One good thing though is that I have found the itunes library files in all the mess.
Does anyone know how I would go about restoring my itunes library with this? I have the library files and all the audio/video files but they are not in the same location nor do they have the same names or folder structure. Basically before they were organized by iTunes in folders by Artist and now they are in folders by file type (eg mp3, avi, mp4 etc). Is it possible to restore it all? Could I just import all the songs back into itunes and then somehow restore the library file to get all my ratings and playlists back?
Or did I lose everything?

I have also found a couple of itunes library files that were recovered from the corrupted hard drive. I have about 5 previous library files and I also have two .xml library files. Would there be a way to somehow salvage my ratings etc from these files? Can i restore the library from these? Everytime i start itunes and try to select one of them it just says that the library files appear to be damaged and creates new ones.

Time Machine is Corrupting my External Drives, Sparsebundle on NAS

Started as my timemachine drive getting flagged as locked and read only 6 months ago. Read up on this problem and no great solution so I buy a new drive so I can fix later without deleting my backups. I tried repairing but it can't be repaired by disk utility. Tried logging in as root and clearing all the permissions, flags and acl's etc, always tells me some type of error why it can't do that. Can open the drive and view the files in time machine. Can open and view files in finder/terminal. Can't copy them off the drive in the directory structure that is there, always says there is some reason it can't do it.
New drive was a NAS approved for time machine use, worked great for a month. First verification thing ran today, and of course Time Machine found a problem and the only solution is for it to delete the whole sparse bundle and start over. Great, because 3 days ago my MBP started locking up, hard reboots, had to repair from CD boot multiple times, still getting beach ball of death and random lockups even though activity monitor says everything is good. Strongly suspect harddrive is going south despite testing out ok.
So right now I bought yet another external drive and am running a new time machine backup as I can't access the last 4 years of time machine backups I have. If I get this running again I'm returning to my previous 10 years of superduper imaging that were rock solid.
Any tips on getting data out of time machine more efficiently once it has locked the drive down so badly? Any reason why in root I still can't overcome the flags on the drive?
Haven't tried much with the sparsebundle yet as I'm worried the drive will fail any moment.

New drive was a NAS approved for time machine use
Not by Apple.
Backing up to a third-party NAS with Time Machine is risky, and unacceptably risky if it's your only backup. I know this isn't the answer you want, and I also know that the manufacturer says the device will work with Time Machine, and that it usually seems to work. Except when you try to restore, and find that you can't.
If you want network backup with Time Machine, use as the destination either an Apple Time Capsule or an external hard drive connected to another Mac or to an 802.11ac AirPort base station. Only the 802.11ac base stations support Time Machine, not any older model.
If you're determined to keep using the NAS for backup, your only recourse for any problems that result is to the manufacturer (which will blame Apple.)

External Drive Partitions Corrupt

I have an external hard drive with 3 partitions. Lately, seemingly at random, the partitions are becoming unmountable (usually one per day). Running Disk Utility always repairs the partition without issue. Its very annoying. Any suggestions?

I just noticed that when this happens if I simply unplug the external drive's USB cable and plug it back in, the partitions all mount properly. The only way to mount them without unplugging is to "repair" them.

External Drive is no longer recognized by Macbook

I have this external drive....
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Passport-Essential-WDME2500TN/dp/B0012GK3M Q/ref=sr11?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1280159206&sr=1-1
It is about 60% full of music/pictures/documents that are NOT on my Macbook, therefore I use it regularly.
Every once in a while, I accidentally remove it without properly ejecting first. But I guess I did it one too many times because now the computer will not recognize it at all.
To insure that the drive wasn't corrupt, I plugged it into a PC. It worked fine. The files are all there and were completely accessible. But as soon as I plugged it back into the Mac, it won't show up.
When I try a Disk Utilities repair, I get the following message:::::
FIRST AID FAILED
Disk Utility stopped repairing “My Passport” because the following error was encountered:
The underlying task reported failure on exit
Verify and Repair disk “My Passport”
** /dev/disk1s1
** Phase 1 - Read FAT
** Phase 2 - Check Cluster Chains
** Phase 3 - Checking Directories
Unable to read directory (Input/output error)
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 non HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error
I have NO $$$, so telling me to purchase a $30-100 program will not help me AT ALL. I'm looking for solutions that will not effect my wallet, even if they take all day to complete.
What can I do????????

Ok. Just to set one part straight- I doubt the problem came from unplugging your drive without ejecting. This usually isn't a problem unless files are writing or in use when you do it, but ejecting is a safe way to avoid issues.
Try force-mounting the drive in terminal by using the following commands
*mkdir /Volumes/yourdrivename*
this command should give you the location of the drive on your computer. (It should be something like disk2 or disk1s3) Then type the location into:
*mount /dev/yourdrivelocation*
Whether or not this works, follow up this step by ejecting the drive and unplugging and plugging it back in. This worked for me when I was having this issue.
Also- are you able to backup and reformat the drive? This would be a good thing to try if other attempts have failed.

Corrupt external drive

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