Disk Utility is completely worthless with external drives

I've tried two different drives now on both Leopard and Tiger. Any time I try to do anything at all with the drive it beach balls and I have to force quit Dick Util. I just want to format/partition one of my hard drives -- something I've done hundreds of times successfully in my life. This is ridiculously frustrating. I've read that the "input/output" error is a bug in Leopard. Extremely disappointing. How can something as fundamental as formatting/partitioning be left unfixed? My wife has an iBook with Tiger and I get the same beach ball.
This is really ******* me off. How can I partition my drive(s)? All I have access to is OS X (Tiger and Leopard). Normally this is a good thing, but not today.

Thanks for the help. I'm not sure what the name of the volume is, though. I put in the "Media name" from Disk Utility.
Here's what the terminal spit out:
$ diskutil repairDisk /Volumes/"WDC WD12 00JB-00EVA0 Media"
Disk Utility Tool
Usage: diskutil verifyVolume MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode
diskutil verifyDisk MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode
diskutil repairVolume MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode
diskutil repairDisk MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode
Verify or repair the file system data structure of a volume.
Ownership of the affected disk is required.
VerifyDisk and repairDisk are allowed but deprecated synonyms for
verifyVolume and repairVolume, respectively.
Example: diskutil verifyVolume /Volumes/SomeDisk

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Disk Utility and DiskWarrior trouble with external hard-drive.

I got an external hard-drive that doesn't show up on finder. On both Disk Utility and DiskWarrior it keeps mounting and unmounting. Disk Utility when trying to repair, spits this out when it unmounts...
2011-07-28 22:43:43 -0700: Problems were encountered during repair of the partition map
2011-07-28 22:43:43 -0700: Error: Some information was unavailable during an internal lookup.
2011-07-28 22:43:43 -0700: : Some information was unavailable during an internal lookup.
2011-07-28 22:43:43 -0700: [DUDiskController mountDisk] expecting DUDisk, but got nil
On DiskWarrior it simply says 'Directory cannot be rebuilt due to disk hardware failure (-36,2747)
Earlier today it would stay mounted and Disk Utility would spit out...
Verify and Repair volume “Back-up Hard Drive”
Checking file systemChecking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Invalid sibling link
Rebuilding catalog B-tree.
Invalid node structure
The volume Back-up Hard Drive could not be repaired.
Volume repair complete.
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
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.
while DiskWarrior would try to fix it, but on
Step 5: Locating directory date...
Speed reduced by disk malfunction: 339,474, er make that 340,239, er make that 341,327
and I finally gave up there.
I try to fix the Invalid sibling link error via Terminal and I get this...
imac-2:~ Migrated$ fsck_hfs -r /dev/disk2s2
** /dev/rdisk2s2 (NO WRITE)
Can't open /dev/rdisk2s2: Resource busy
Is there ANY THING I can do to get it to stay mounted and possibly fix this? This is my back-up hard-drive!!

It's the cord that's being used that decides if it shows up, or if it shows up and then goes away over and over. Using a cord where it stays on in the programs, when I run Disk Utility of the darked out part of the hard-drive, it spits out...
Verifying and repairing partition map for “MICRONET”
Checking prerequisites
Checking the partition list
Checking for an EFI system partition
Checking the EFI system partition’s size
Checking the EFI system partition’s file system
Checking all HFS data partition loader spaces
Reviewing boot support loaders
Checking Core Storage Physical Volume partitions
Updating Windows boot.ini files as required
The partition map appears to be OK
while the part of the disk just below it that's light spits out
Verifying volume “Back-up Hard Drive”
Checking file system
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
Verify and Repair volume “Back-up Hard Drive”
Starting repair tool:
Checking file system
Volume repair complete.
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
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.
Disk Utility stopped repairing “Back-up Hard Drive”: 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.
while DiskWarrior tries to rebuild it and spits out a memory error.

Can Disk Utility get SMART status from external drives?

I recently updated my backup plan with a NewerTech quad-interface dock and a WD Caviar Green hd. I'm using the FW800 interface to connect to my iMac (10.6.7) Everything works perfectly, as expected. I noticed, though, that Disk Utility cannot report the SMART status on the new WD drive. DU simply says "Not Supported" under SMART Status.
Is Disk Utility telling me that it doesn't read SMART status from external drives? Or is it telling me that the new drive doesn't support SMART (which I would find highly unusual)? And, if it's Disk Utility that can't read the status, are there any third-party apps that can report the SMART status on an external drive?
Thanks,
JimC

Unfortunately I cannot speak to the NewerTech enclosure, but in principle it appears to be possible to have SMART information displayed even for external drives if the enclosure's bridge controller chip allows it.
My experience:
I've used two MacPower Pleiades FW800/400/USB/eSATA enclosures for several years and I've now supplemented them with two additional inXtron enclosures. They all work as expected daisy-chained to the iMac.
The interesting thing is that the inXtron enclosures came with a CD with some software on it ("Smart AP") which is not available for download, notably a Dashboard Widget for displaying actual and maximum temperatures, total hours of operation, start/stop cycles, drive model and serial number.
This widget is complete garbage, though – it is a nauseating nightmare of extreme over-design at the expense of even basic usability:
http://www.inxtron.com/information-center/smart-ap-for-external-hard-drives
To make matters even worse, it can only display the above information for the first external drive connected.
BUT: This Widget internally calls a command line utility which does the actual parameter retrieval, and that one can be called from the terminal as well.
So after installing the software from CD and effectively discarding the Widget, I checked out the command line utility in the Terminal and found that this utility actually reported data about ALL my enclosures, both the inXtron and the MacPower ones (there seems to be firmware compatibility across these):
(The '$' is supposed to be Terminal's bash prompt – type in only the rest of the respective line.)
$ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 1
29 50 13 8
53 67 645 15829
52 53 90 7105
51 52 18 13
Each line reports the following for one connected enclosure:
[temp] [maxtemp] [cycles] [hours]
The drives are reported first USB, then FireWire drives, each in the order of first connection / mounting.
$ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 2
WD-WCA**************
WDC WD30EZRX-00MMMB0
5TE09***************
ST31000333AS-00MMMB0
5TE09***************
ST31000333AS-00MMMB0
WD-WMA**************
WDC WD30EZRS-00J99B0
Each drive gets two lines reported, first the drive's serial number ("***" blocking out my exact ones), then the drive model.
$ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 3
29 50 13 8
WD-WCA**************
WDC WD30EZRX-00MMMB0
53 67 645 15829
5TE09***************
ST31000333AS-00MMMB0
52 53 90 7105
5TE09***************
ST31000333AS-00MMMB0
51 52 18 13
WD-WMA**************
WDC WD30EZRS-00J99B0
This combines both of the above.
$ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 5
disk4
disk1
disk2
disk3
This reports the mounted disk names (referring not to the volume names but to the internal Unix names as in /dev/[drive]); Numbering is in connection / mounting order, the actual sequence is as always USB drives, then FireWire drives.
$ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 6
USB
1394
1394
1394
This reports the connection interface for each drive in the same sequence as all other commands.
$ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 7
MPT934DS1.20.0104.00
MPT934DS1.20.0104.00
This might report the firmware revision or something like that.
These are the commands I know about, and they apply only to the "Smart AP" software supplied with current inXtron enclosures, but it may be possible that other brands use it as well.
I have not been able to identify information about the self-test (early(?) failure warning), but it might be contained as well in the data reported above.
As always, your mileage may vary and you should never do such experiments without FIRST making sure you've got backups of your data and that such backup is not connected during experimentation!
Maybe this can help some people getting the information they need; And maybe there are similar capabilities with other enclosures. At the very least it demonstrates that with the proper firmware in the enclosures themselves and some software on the Mac it IS possible to get at least some of the SMART information from the drive in an external FireWire- or USB-connected enclosure.
None of that is fed into the system's "official" SMART mechanism, though, so no luck using standard mechanisms or applications for it. It's strictly a command-line affair (deservedly disregarding the mishappen Widget).
Good luck!

Disk Utility "frozen" trying to format external drive

some help please...
I've got a 120gb external USB/NDAS drive that was previously formatted in NFTS on a Windows XP machine. Using Disk Utility on my new MacBook, I attempted to erase it and reformat it using the "MS-DOS" option in Disk Utility (so I can use it on both OSes). I got the spinning beach ball for several hours, at which point I forced-quit Disk Utility. The drive is now unseen by Windows, and when I plug it into the MacBook, it tells me it can't be mounted, so I choose initialize. When I attempt to either erase or partition the drive for MS-DOS, I get the beachball. I left it overnight to see if it was just taking a while, and no difference.
What next? Should I try formatting it for Mac and then reformatting MS-DOS/FAT32 and see if that works?
Thanks in advance...

I had a similar problem with an older drive, eventually I did get it formatted using my iBook, but it wasn't worth it as the drive failed completely several months later (at the most inconvenient time, of course). If the drive is older than 3 years it might be on its last legs and you would be better off to buy a new drive anyway.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Disk Utility: Backup to partition on external drive?

Hi people. Would be glad of an answer and any comments on this.
I have 3 Macs at home, a new G5 dual core and 2 G4 imacs, networked wirelessly. At this point I only backup my G5 to a second internal HD, by using Disk Utility's 'Restore' function.
My preferred plan is to get an external Firewire 400 drive, make 3 partitions on it, and do the Disk Utility 'Restore' for the 3 respective Macs. That way it's not only a backup, but a bootable solution if one of the machines dies.
My second choice is to add one of those generic network hard drives to the router and try to back up to that(essentially as an FTP/Samba disk), but it would be slow and not bootable at all.
Question: Will disk utility allow a partition, either on a firewire drive or network drive, to be the destination for a 'restore'? Or will it only recognise whole volumes?

Hi, Daniel.
You wrote: "Question: Will disk utility allow a partition, either on a firewire drive or network drive, to be the destination for a 'restore'? Or will it only recognise whole volumes? "Disk Utility will recognize a volume (partition) on a FireWire drive as the destination for a Restore.
Using the Restore function for backup is quite time-consuming as it has to backup everything every time you perform a backup. You will get much faster results by using a proper Backup and Recovery solution that supports incremental backups, i.e. backing up just the changes from the source to the destination (backup) so that the two are synchronized. For advice on the backup and recovery solution I employ, see my "Backup and Recovery" FAQ.
People have had mixed results using NAS (Network-attached Storage) for backups. I frankly think that it's still a bit early to try that route. Using an external FireWire drive has always given be good results.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Disk Utility assigns incorrect identifier to external drive

Hi, I am running 10.7.5, I backup my notebook to a 500GB drive using Time Machine, after a recent backup my 2TB drive is labled as the 500GB BACKUP drive in disk utility and not mounted under finder. I tried everything. I am unable to unmount the drive in disk utility, disk info insists it is a 500GB drive, TERMINAL drive info insists the drive is also a 500GB drive.
I am assuming drive data is stored somewhere on my local OS and this reference table became corrupted, there is no way a 2TB drive can now become a 500GB BACKUP drive overnight. Using TERMINAL I can open and view the content on the disk. Funny thing is the 2TB drive is a WD and the 500GB is a Seagate, Disk Utility gets this info right, but otherwise insists the drive is my Time Machine backup drive and Time Machine wants to write a backup <- I turned this off for now in fear that Time Machine will reformat the disk and I will loose data on my 2TB drive. Reformating the 2TB drive is not an option, verifying the disk claims it requires repair, not an option. All I need is the drive to lablled correctly so all the processes can assume as normal.
I am 100% sure Apple has terminal command to repair the local OS disk reference table so all external drives can be relisted (meaning reidentified) correctly.

Also worth noting that, if your drive has a FireWire interface, use that instead of USB. While the theoretical max speed of USB2 is faster than FireWire 400, in real-world conditions FW will blow the socks off USB. And if you're purchasing an external drive, it repays on the long run to pay a little more to purchase one with FW. And, of course, if FW400 is faster, FW800 is out of sight.

Disk Utility does not recognize ethernet external drive

I recently purchased a lacie ethernet external drive 1.5Tb to use with time machine and need to partition it. I mount the drive and open up disk utility, but it does not show up there. Any suggestions?

You cannot partition and format a drive over the network. You will need to connect the drives directly to your computer first in order to partition and format them (unless that's already been done at the factory.) Read the documentation that came with them product or contact LaCie's tech support.

Disk Utility won't burn with external dvd burner!!! HELP?!?!?!

Hello anyone/everyone!
I need some help, I'm trying to burn a file using the disk utility. Only thing is that the disk utility wants to used the drive installed on my iBook (combo drive) and not my external DVD drive! I couldn't find a way to be able to chnage the default burner, and I was hoping that someone/anyone could help me out? The file is too large for a regular 800mb disk so I have to use the external dvd burner. Help me please oh wise-ones?!
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Find out if the external burner is Patchburn compatible. If it is, then apply it from http://www.patchburn.de/
If not, I'd sell the external burner and get one that is compatible like those from http://www.macsales.com/
You may find other tricks on http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/ as well.

Hi! Missing disk utility apps and problems with external disc

Hi everybody! after installing snow leopard, as a way to get to lion, I dont have the disk utility apps.
Besides Im having a lot of problems with an external new Toshiba 1T disc that I try to use with Time machine cause I daily receive the OSX msg CANT REPAIR THE DISK REFORMAT IT!
Thanks a lot to all of the community
I do love Apple product. And counting the days for the iOS 6 upgrade!!

hugorodri wrote:
Hi everybody! after installing snow leopard, as a way to get to lion, I dont have the disk utility apps...
Before you go to Lion, just a reminder. I know you recently moved up to Snow Leopard. Be sure that everything you were running in Leopard, and now in SL, will work for you in Lion.
Remember, Rosetta and all PPC apps are gone (Word 2004, some versions of PhotoShop etc) Check the compatibility list before you ditch SL.
As far as your Disk Utility problem, how hard is it to reinstall SL?
I've taken a screen shot of my Utilities folder to show you what you are looking for. The Utilities folder as mentioned above is in the Aplication Folder (or you may have pulled it out to the side bar as well, in which case there will be an icon and the word Utilities in Places in the side bar.
Mrs H

Disk Utility won't format/partition external HD

I was just using this HD earlier tonight because it had a VMware image on it that I use. (Drive previously formatted under Tiger's disk utility) Well, I decided I wanted to repartition it so I could have a LeopardInstallDVD partition and a partition for my VMware images. When I tried to repartition the HD in Disk Utility, it just kinda froze and I just got the spinning beach ball, so I had to Force Quit. I tried it again; same result. I tried to restart the computer, but it froze, so I had to hard boot it. Upon restart, I was greeted with a message that one of the disks was not recognized by the OS. Guess which one? Yep, not only did it no longer show up in Disk Utility, but now the other external drive I was using for my Time Machine backups was no longer showing either. I turned off that hard drive and turned it back on and luckily it mounted and all my backups seem to be intact. However, I still couldn't get the other one to show up. So, I unhooked it and attached it to a windows machine and it showed up as "uninitialized disk". I was able to initialize it and reformat it as NTFS. I then unhooked it, plugged it back into my Mac and it recognized it as a NTFS drive with one volume called "new volume." I again tried to partition it and all I get is the spinning beach ball and I have to force quit. I can't even do an "erase" on the drive; I just get the spinning beach ball. What is going on here? Did Leopard corrupt my drive somehow?
Edit: I just hooked up the drive to my windows machine AGAIN and formatted it as NTFS and I copied some files to it to make sure it works. Then I hooked it back to my Mac and it recognized the drive and one volume called "new volume" and it automatically mounted. I can see the files that I copied to the drive. The drive still works, but apparently only under Windows now. Why can't I partition the drive with disk utility?

Well, since it's an 80GB drive, XP wouldn't let me format it as anything other than NTFS, so I had to create smaller partitions in order to use Fat32. I created a 10GB fat32 and a 30GB fat32 and left the rest unallocated. I connected it back to my mac and it recognized both partitions in disk utility and it let me erase the 10 GB and format it as HFS+. However, I wanted to make it a GUID partition and I don't know how to do this besides repartitioning the disk. I clicked on the hard drive itself, clicked partition, created 1 partition to test (using the whole 76GB), and all I get is the spinning beach ball. I don't get it.

In disk utility, it shows that my external hard drive is somehow unmounted and I can't access it in finder or repair it in Disk Utility. How can I get this working without losing my important data?

In disk utility, it shows that my external hard drive is somehow unmounted and I can't access it in finder or repair it in Disk Utility. How can I get this working without losing my important data?
Thank you!

When you erased the disk did you select Mac OS Extended Journaled as the format option?

Disk utility will not unmount my external HD to make repairs

Hi. Having a problem with an external 2TB HD connected to my iMac 11,2 running 10.6.8. The external was originally connected to a MacBook Pro (same OS) which failed and was replaced by the iMac about a month ago. The external has 3 partitions: Time Machine backup, Carbon Copy Cloner backup and a storage partition for image files.
I used the Time Machine back up to transfer files to the new iMac, re-cloned the whole drive to the CCC partition and added some new files to the storage partition. Everything has been fine until yesterday. I realized I hadn't turned on Time Machine yet to start backing up the new iMac. I selected the same Time Machine backup partition I had been using w/ the MacBook Pro as my Time Machine backup drive for the iMac, but all attempts to back up failed. Got this message:
Time Machine could not complete the backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder.
Now when I turn on the external HD I get a message saying that the Storage volume can't be repaired and to back up the files from it. If I run Disk Utility it cannot unmount any of the volumes and can't initiate any repairs. Trying to fix disk permissions would fail on the CCC volume until 30' ago when it started displaying a long list of error messages. it's still doing it. Most of them start off with:
Open error 16: "Resource busy" on System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/ (this part here changes for each line).
And then the others begin with:
Open error 1: "Operation not permitted" on System/Library/frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/test/test _set.pyc (with some variation at the end)
When this list started running in Disk Utility, the Console displayed the following:
Cleaning up expired diagnostic messages database at path: /var/log/DiagnosticMessages/ 2014.05.28.asl
Disk Utility just finished with a bunch of lines that start off w/ either Unable to set owner and group on … or Unable to set permissions on ...
I can still display the contents of the volumes in Finder and I'm able to access the files but I can't work w/ the volumes themselves as explained.
Any ideas anyone?

Thanks Lau for you comments.
I need to install os8 because I need to run some old apps and I am using my os 9 for another computer I have.
By the way, the HFS+ file system was suuported from OS 8.1 and after and so that is not an issue. Good idea though.
And so I am back at my original question. It would appear that my OS X install disk doesn't like my blue and white G3's internal 12 GIG ATA drive and so I cannot format it with OSX Disk Utility. I would like to know why but for now I will just use OS 9 or OS8 drive setup. And so I have two choices: OS9 drive setup or OS8.5 Drive setup. Does it matter which I use? In other words is one better than the other? I will be later installing OS 8.6 onto this drive - and maybe OS 9 in the far future. I will try OS9's drive setup first.
Yes, and so this is my most immediate question at this point:
is there a difference between OS8.5 drive setup and OS9's Drive setup? (in terms or formatting a drive to install OS 8, 9 or even X maybe one day?) I will be using HFS+.
And then my second question is my original question which is why doesn't my OS 10.1.5 Disk Utility select my 12 GIG ATA drive? (its greyed out - dimmed?)
Thanks

Disk Utility not finding new internal hard drive

Hi All
My internal hard drive died recently and I replaced with a western digital drive from newegg..
All the cables are hooked up correctly, including the orange cable attached to the hard drive. Problem is that when I go to install OS X, Disk Utility doesn't even list the drive. Is there something I need to do beforehand? Anyone have any ideas as to why Disk Utility isn't even seeing the drive? Jumpers maybe?
Thanks in advance.
-Aaron

I doubt that any jumpers are needed, since this is the only (master) drive in the system. WD's site has pretty good info on this. Verify for yourself however.
Also, from their site:
How to partition and format an internal slave drive or an external drive in a Mac OS X (all versions).
Answer
In Mac OS X, you can use the built in Disk Utility to partition and initialize the drive so it will appear on the desktop.
1. Open the main drive (the drive that contains the operating system).
2. Open the Applications folder.
3. Open the Utilities folder.
4. Select Disk Utility.
5. The drives are displayed on the left side of the window. Click on the drive that you wish to partition (the top drive listing for the hard drive that you want to work with).
6. Once the drive is selected click on Partition.
7. Click on the Options button to select the partitioning scheme.
8. Click on Apple Partitioning Scheme or Apple Partitioning Map and then click on the OK button.
9. You will see several options for setting up the drive. Once you have selected the number of partitions, the format type you want, and a volume label, click the Partition button.
10. Following the completion of this process, the drive will appear on the desktop.
Joe

'Disk Utility has lost connection with Disk Management Tool' w/ RAID 10 set

Using 4 internal drives, I have specified the following setup for each:
2 partitions, 1 'speed' of 5 GB and 1 'data' of whatever remains.
The 4 speed partitions stripe to a single RAID volume correctly.
The 4 data partitions are used to make a RAID 10 volume as follows:
The first 2 data partitions are mirrored to make a 'data-A'
The next 2 data partitions are mirrored to make a 'data-B'
These complete correctly.
Upon attempting to strip data-A and data-B in order to finish the RAID 10 setup, Disk Utility quits with the following message:
"Disk Utility has lost connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch Disk Utility'.
A search here and on the nets reveals only that this message appeared in 10.3.x when attempting to repair disk permissions and had to do with a rogue iTunes support file. This is occurring on a blank system (no iTunes installed) so I don't think its the same cause.
Note that I was able to complete this setup under Tiger several times without issue, so it seems to be unique to Leopard. Does anyone know what is going on and hopefully suggest a workaround?

To answer my own issue and leave a marker here for others, I was able to successfully set up a RAID 10 partition using diskutil, indicating that the problem is Disk Utility itself and not the RAID implementation.
Disk Utility has proven itself to be bugridden (must restart frequently to get updated view of volumes; drops device names at various times; etc.) and this latest bug would seem to suggest that it should be avoided in favor of diskutil for any serious RAID construction.

Finder crashes with External Drive on Sleep Mode

I purchased my new iMac 21,5" less than a week ago, and I haven't had a problem with it except for one that it's been bugging me a lot.
I have a LaCie 1TB Quadra d2 external drive that I use to store footage (since it's HD, the filesize won't fit in my 500TB internal hard drive), but I noticed that sometimes when LaCie external drive enters in Sleep Mode, the Finder freezes and the only two ways around this, is to force reboot, because the Finder won't answer and won't open again, or unplugging the external drive without ejecting him first, which it's not safe for me to do, because I'm afraid of hurting the device, and the files in it are pretty important.
This happens almost everytime, especially after a long time on sleep mode. I usually leave Final Cut Pro transferring files all night (since it takes a long time) so I kinda need the sleep mode, but when I wake up, Finder and Final Cut Pro won't answer.
I updated to Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on day one. Is there a way to fix this? Is it normal? I read somewhere that some users were having trouble with external drives on Sleep Mode, but I can't seem to find any further information about this problem.
Thanks!

I've got a MacBook Pro 13.3" that's a little over a month old, with a LaCie 1TB LaCie d2 Quadra with USB 3.0, #301542U and I'm suffering the same problems and a few others with it. I've got a partition on it set up as my Time Machine backup drive. I've turned off the Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible in the Energy Saver preferences but I'm still having the sleep problem with it. According to the LaCie Manual:
By default, your drive will enter Eco Mode after 30 minutes of inactivity in order to conserve energy. To exit Eco Mode, simply access data on the drive and the disk will automatically restart. You can manage this feature using LaCie Desktop Manager. Click the Eco tab.
The LaCie Desktop Manager (in my case) only takes me to the Energy Saver Preferences in OS X to adjust the time there. Turning off Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible doesn't seem to make any difference, the drive still goes to sleep after 30 minutes. However, after 15 minutes the drive seems to wake back up, but then during the next 15 minutes goes comatose (no power light). Sometimes it will go through multiples of these sleep wake cycles without going into a coma, but eventually it does go into a coma. This happens in between hourly Time Machine backups.
After locking up Finder, Disk Utility and Time Machine multiple times trying to access the drive in this state I figured out that I could cycle the power switch to regain use of it (with a Finder warning of course) but this will only lead to file corruption eventually and I shouldn't have to resort to this. I've also dismounted it, expecting it to turn off and instead it goes into an extended spin down cycle (rapidly flashing light) and never turns off (or goes to sleep or what ever it's supposed to do) and once again requires turning the power switch off.
This is just too unpredictible and unrelable for me and as soon as I get the opportunity to do a 7 pass erase I'll be returning to the place of purchase. Based on the reviews of other external hard drives a drive from another company doesn't look to be much better of a prospect so I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

Disk Utility is completely worthless with external drives

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