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!
~Lyssa

Your 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.

Similar Messages

Macbook won't recognize external Hard Drive and issues with Time Machine

Hello everyone,
I have just bought a new Macbook Pro with Mountain Lion and I am currently having problems with Time Machine.
The issue begun in Snow Leopard: Time Machine was taking too long to backup, and would often not finish the backup because the external hard drive would be unwillingly ejected.
Now with Mountain Lion I have reformated the drive (Mac OS Journaled) and about a third of the way through had the same issue: the drive was ejected before the backup could be finished. I restarted the machine and it happened again. However, now the computer won't even recognize the external drive when I plug it in. I have also tried to power off/on the drive itself to no progress.
I have tested the USB port with another drive and the port is fine. I have also tested the usb cable and it is fine. And Disk Utility does not recognize the drive (even when I try the >diskutil list command in terminal).
Now, I can hear the drive humming normally when I turn it on, and it is not usb-powered (my electricity current does fluctuate).
Could the interrupted backup procedures have damaged the drive? And if so, wouldn't the computer recognize it anyway?
It is a 4 year old WD 1 TB that is used exclusively for TM and has never left the house.
Thank you for your time reading this and let me know if you need any more information that could help out.
Cheers!

From your description, I'd suspect a failing drive. Maybe time for a new external, especially as you've already re-formatted and it's still playing up.
I had a similar problem with one of my clone backups a few weeks ago - it failed, I erased it, re-cloned, worked a couple of times and then it failed again. Disk Utility didn't throw up any errors after re-formatting. I guess all disks die at some point.

External Hard Drive Corrupt

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

IPhoto External Hard Drive Backup Issues

Hi All,
I'm have trouble with iPhoto on my iMac G5.
I'm running out of space on my hard drive so I want to permanently move my iphoto library over to my external Lacie hard drive. I've created a copy of the iPhoto library on the external hard drive, but it does not update automatically when I add new photos, and ultimately I want to move the entire iPhoto libray over to this drive to save space on my iMac.
Any ideas on how to do this?
Thanks in advance
Sky

Sky:
Welcome to the Apple Discussions. What you need to do is launch iPhoto with the Option key depressed and, when asked, opt to locate your library. Then navigate to the library on the external and select it.
If you have photos in your old library that you want to copy to the external library either drag the appropriate roll folder in the Originals folder into the open iPhoto window to import those files or use iPhoto Library Manager to cpy the rolls from the old library to the new one like this. This way you can retain any keywords or comments you've added to those files. When you're satisfied that your external library has all of the photos you can delete the one on your boot drive.
Do you Twango?
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've written an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.

External Hard Drive Sync Issue with Deletion

So I recently set up my external hard drive to be my main music folder. The external HD runs continuously on my Mac Pro desktop. I've set it up so the external HD is mounted remotely on my laptop, so I can get all my itunes music without having to physically connect to the drive. I've set it up and everything loaded in, works fine. . . .
But then I tried to delete some files using itunes. It deleted them from my itunes library alright. But they did not delete from the external HD. Furthermore, it did not even prompt me to "keep files" or "delete from library".
I then ran an test. Could i change ID3 tags? Maybe I didn't have write permission or something. Nope, I was able to change ID3 tags just fine.
Does anybody know a way to make this work? Why it doesn't prompt me to "delete" my files?
Thanks.

is there perhaps a problem with permissions? does this problem happen whether you're using either computer or only with the laptop? maybe the laptop only has permission to delete songs from its local database and but not to delete the tracks from the shared master music folder.
i use a wireless external drive for my music too. though i've never had your problem, i have experienced something similar. if i delete a track via Finder then open iTunes, it still thinks the track is there. so if i then delete it in iTunes, it doesn't ask me if i want to keep the files or not, it only removes it from the iTunes library. in other words, i don't get prompted to keep or delete tracks if the track is already gone from the hard drive but still in the iTunes database. i haven't tried changing the tags in that scenario however.

External Hard drive connection issue

I'm using Mac G5, FCP 5.0.
I bought a La Cie external hard drive, and transfered all the files which relate to this feature length project. It opens and works well, but every time when I open the project on FCP, it starts searching maybe 30 files, and I have to wait about 7 minutes.(It's not the one which is in a big gray window and ask you if you want to reconnect. It is a small white box, and it says "it is searching"file name"", and it actually finds the files automatically) Is it normal? Or did I do somthing wrong when I transfered the files?
If there is someone who knows how to solve this problem, please teach me how.
Thank you very very much in advance.
Kiki

Select the drive on the desktop and type cmd+i. This opens a window that reports the formatting of the drive. If it's msdos you need to reformat it Mac OS Extended with Apple's Drive Utility found in the Utilities folder in your Applications folder. You'll lose all of the files, but it will actually work right.
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 you

Balibaleia 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.

External Hard Drive Mounting Issues

Hi everybody!
Problem:
My G Technologies external hard drive mounts inconsistently since the Pro Tools session I was working on today crashed. When it does manage to mount my Trash Bin on the dock fills up with trash automatically and this trash cannot be emptied.
In addition I have been unable to even open up my external hard drive on the desktop once it has mounted--I get the infinite pinwheel of death! If it does open, I'll eventually get to a folder that upon opening also brings up the pinwheel of death. Each time this happens I am forced to manually shut down my computer. Any suggestions? You help would be GREATLY appreciated! Thank you in advance.
I'm using a MacBook Pro with OSX 10.4.11 and it has a Intel Core 2 Duo processor. The ports I'm using with the external hard drive is Firewire 800.

Try booting in safe mode and emptying the trash. Try doing a Finder - Secure Empty Trash deletion....
I believe your problems are related to large files that were marked for deletion not being deleted...

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 sleep issue

My external drive contains my share folder for DC++.
If I leave my computer on when I'm gone, my DC++ shows my share as 0 after a while.
The hard drive seems to unmount after a while, maybe because the enclose sleeps the drive after a while.
Is there any way to fix this?

hdparm cannot read or set anything, a communication error always occurs.
Also dmesg records some errors on the moment I try to read something from drive and it goes off (always after some period of inactivity) and also logs when it's then detected (some seconds after) and mounted correctly.
EDIT: dmesg output
usb 1-3: USB disconnect, address 41
sd 13:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled error code
sd 13:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x07 driverbyte=0x00
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 163055695
sd 13:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled error code
sd 13:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x01 driverbyte=0x00
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 163055695
usb 1-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 42
usb 1-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
scsi14 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 42
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
input: Western Digital External HDD as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-3/1-3:1.1/input/input23
generic-usb 0003:1058:0705.000F: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.10 Device [Western Digital External HDD ] on usb-0000:00:1d.7-3/input1
scsi 14:0:0:0: Direct-Access WD 2500BMV External 1.75 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
sd 14:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete
sd 14:0:0:0: [sdb] 488397168 512-byte logical blocks: (250 GB/232 GiB)
sd 14:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 14:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
sd 14:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 14:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdb: sdb1
sd 14:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 14:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
EXT2-fs warning: mounting unchecked fs, running e2fsck is recommended
Last edited by Vieira (2009-12-16 02:51:43)

Lightroom 3 and external hard drive import issues

So here is my situation. I just came from a PC to a new MacBook Pro. Intially all my phots from over the years got imported into iPhoto. But I don't want to use iPhoto because I bought LR3. So I copied all my photos (manually) out of the iPhoto directory onto an external raid drive in my Photos directory there. But the problem is they are all in some wierd folder names now on the external drive. How can I import them all into LR3 and have them organized in folders by their creation dates? Right now LR just sees my external drive and all those weird folders but I have not imported anything yet into my library. Can this be done how i want it to look?
Also, I watched a tutorial on how to move my catalog file over to the external drive and I did that. Then today I went to import some photos for the first time off my card from my camera but they imported back on my internal drive LR catalog. I have the preferences set to point to the catalog on the external drive but they didn't import there.

In import Lr can organize the imported photos by date.
In the Import Dialog, on the right side in the DestinationPanel under <Organize> selcet <By Date>.
LR the creates a folder for each date and puts the photos in there.
I would not recommend to have the catalog on an external drive. The reason is that in order to speed up LR, the catalog should be on a fast internal drive. The connection to external drives is (usually) slower, particularly for USB drives. It might work if your external HD is an eData drive.
Also, the location of the catalog is not identical with the location of your photos. The catalog is the database where LR saves all the edits, and also the location of your image files, their names, and other things. This catalog should be on a fast drive; your images can be on an external drive (images and catalog do not have to be on the same drive!).
LR will put imported photos on the drives / folders that you specify in the Import Dialog - right side, panel <Destination>. This has nothing to do with the catalog. This is where your images are.
Reading you rmessage I get the feeling that you did not mean catalog in this sense but in the sense of "all my photos". Am I right?
Sinve you seem to be new to LR, I would recommend that you watch some of the excellent tutorial videos that Adobe has on their website.
Here is the link: http://www.adobe.com/support/photoshoplightroom/
WW

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.

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 disappeared

Well 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.

Windows Easy Transfer (WET) Issues with External Hard Drive - "Can't read from the source file or disk"

I work for Office Depot, in the tech department. Basically, one of our associates was supposed to do a data backup, and re-install Windows 7, then transfer the files back. He used Windows Easy Transfer and compacted everything into a 163 GB file.
Now comes the hard part. When we try to put it back on his computer ((drag-and-drop to the desktop) which has been wiped back to factory settings using the recovery partition), it stops at 79.5 GB remaining (you know how it doesn't give you a % of completion,
it just shows how many GB are remaining) and then says "Can't read from the source file or disk" and gives you an option to try again, or cancel. It gets hung up on the same point each time.
Normally, this wouldn't be a huge issue, but the contents on the drive are his wife's architect blueprints and interior design stuff, along with wedding photos, etc, which are the only copies they have. On top of those, they have court documents and other
important files that we are unable to access now.
I wasn't involved with this transfer, so I'm trying to clean up the mess as best I can. I remembered that the customer's wife was Russian, and had some files typed with a Russian keyboard, so on and so forth. I wonder if that's the issue? If not, I really
have no idea how to manually extract things from a ".mig" file, or how to diagnose what area is potentially corrupted.
In light of this situation, we tried using "Recuva" to recover the files post-wipe, but everything was corrupted or unable to be opened, and it also extracted and recovered all of the "useless" photos, such as the skype logos, up and
down arrows for browsers, etc (it was 160,000+ photos).
Trying to avoid a potential lawsuit, unhappy customer, and costing the company lots of money to see if professionals can get into this external hard drive.
Other relevant information:
We used a Toshiba 500 GB (465 GB) external hard drive.
Customer's computer is an HP Pavilion P6000 Series (Model No. p6520y) running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Service Pack 1.
Any other information that is needed can be provided, thanks in advance, and hopefully we can find a solution to this issue quickly!
-John

I think there's a lack of understanding somewhere.
"If you even can't start the process, please unplug it from your new PC. Then head back to your new computer and plug
the external drive back in to your new computer. "
Unplug from new, head back to new, plug it back in? That doesn't make much sense! Haha.
I knew what you meant though, somewhat. When I search through the drives after clicking yes (Has windows easy transfer
already saved your files blah blah blah) I click on the transfer file and it says "Windows Easy Transfer could not open the file".
Rather than drag-and-drop the file to the desktop, I now tried to double-click on the file itself while it was plugged
into the computer. It opened, and it started transferring until it was about 70% completed, and then an error popped up saying "WET can't open the easy transfer file, make sure your USB device is plugged in or check your internet connection".
I checked, and the USB hard drive's light wasn't on. Now, I unplug it and plug it back in, and the light comes back on,
so I click Retry, and it resets the bar back to nothing and says "Transfer time: 1 minute".
Rather than continue trying, I clicked "Cancel" instead of Retry, and it says "Your transfer did not complete successfully."
It says to click "view report" for more information, but there's no "view report button".
At the moment, I am scanning the External Drive for bad sectors using the check disk tool in properties. It's frozen
at "0 USN bytes processed".

External hard drive corruption issues

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