USB External Drive Backup & Erase Woes

I have been using a Lacie 500GB USB external drive allocated as a backup disk for time machine. Over the last couple of weeks, the disk has been spontaneously ejecting itself from the desktop. This could happen when not backing up to time machine, or during the backup.
I am not a daily time machine backup-er, as I don't have much to backup on a daily basis (and I weekly backup to an alternative disk using Super Duper). What I had noticed with the time machine disk, is that the preparation prior to the backup beginning was a massive 40+GB, certainly not the amount of data which would have been 'new'.
To try to resolve this, I have used disk utility to verify the disk, and the snow leopard disc to check my boot disk on the Macbook Pro... there has not been a problem identified with either.
Today, I decided to erase the time machine disk, zero the data, and re-allocate the drive for time machine backup. After setting these preferences in disk utility, and clicking 'erase', the disk again erased itself, with the error message :
'Disk erase failed with the error: Assert: internal error, or unimplemented'
I then had an external disk which was not present on the desktop, and apparently in some sort of limbo between erased and mounted!
I was able to do a simpler format function on the disk via disk utility, the disk will mount, but the allocated disk space previously used by time machine is still present, and the format has only done that remaining space on the disk.
Anyone know what the above error message refers to, am I able to reformat the disk using the 'zero function', or has the disk failed and become unrecoverable?
Answers / suggestions kindly welcomed.

Welcome to Apple Discussions.
When you use Disk Utility to erase totally you need to click on the LaCie drive name not the name that appears on the desktop. Select how many partitions you want and give each partition the name you want it to have and perhaps also the partitioning scheme and other options that are available, then erase.
Doing this will of course make all that is on the drive unavailable to you.
These are LaCie's directions for their drives.
Some LaCie drives might also have firmware updates available - worth a check on their website.
Note that LaCie seem to have 2 yr warranty on their drives, at least the one I looked at on their website. If the drive is younger than this you might have a warranty claim.

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USB External Drive Trouble

Back in April, I hooked a 500 GB USB external drive to my iMac in order to run time machine. All worked fine until October 17. Yesterday Time Machine popped up with a message telling me it had not backed up in 10 days and I should figure this out. At this point, I noticed that the external drive was no longer mounted on the desktop, although I could see it in Disk Utility. The POSIX error came up. After a long search on the forum and fighting with a PC in the house, I was able to reformat the drive and let Time Machine do its thing.
The initial backup went great and it seemed to back up every hour until 12 am or so it says. Once again, I came down this am and the drive is not mounted and not showing in Disk Utility. I turned it off and on again and now the computer tells me it needs to be initialized.
What in the world is going on? Is it related to USB control and SL? Is it a Time Machine issue? Should I reformat the drive and see if I can simply copy files to the drive and see if it stays mounted that way?
I do not know how to tell an external drive when to unmount or if it should upon the computer going to sleep.
Any help would be greatly appreciated before I spend more money on a new drive.
Debbioe

Thanks, that one's not on my suspect list... yet
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2. Click the "Erase" tab
3. Select your entire external drive on the sidebar (the uppermost icon).
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How Restore Deleted or Missing OS X Components
A few of the basic OS X installed applications can be restored from the Optional Installs installer located in the Optional installs folder on your Installer DVD. However, if what you need is not there then follow the instructions below.
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/Volumes/disc name/System/Installation/Packages (where disc name is the name of the CD/DVD that you inserted.
• Click on the "Go" button ..... • Drag a .pkg to Pacifist..... proceed to step 7.
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4. On the top of the Pacifist window, click “verify” .... you will probably be prompted for your password.
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20 files were scanned. 20 of 20 files were present on the hard disk. 0 of 20 files had file permissions that did not match those specified in the package. 0 of 20 files had checksums that did not match those specified in the package.
6. Click “close”. Go to step 7.
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Pacifist may find that a file it is installing already exists on the hard disk. Pacifist will present you with an alert panel....
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Greetings-
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Keith Garner - keithga.wordpress.com

Hi, I have a macbook pro with a new hard drive installed. My WD external drive backup on time machine now wont let me access the files. I get a prompt saying 'you do not have permission to access the files'

hi, I have a macbook pro with a new hard drive installed and restored. My WD external drive backup on time machine now wont let me access the files. I get a prompt saying 'you do not have permission to access the files' After my new drive was installed I plugged in time machine and it started backing up. I paused it when I realised that it was running for more than a few minutes. I now realise that it probably started backing up the new hard drive all over again. Which makes me think that the original back up must be on the WD back I cant seem to access it. Any ideas would be helpful.

See E-10 in the first link.
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Sharon,
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Léonie

USB External Drive Backup & Erase Woes

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