I had a similar experience a couple of months ago. My second backup drive died without warning, not long after my first backup drive started acting strangely. The latter is also a MyBook, but an older one of 500MB, and the problem was slightly different to yours - it wasn't recognised by the operating system until about 15 minutes after powering up. It then behaved itself and continues to do so, although I don't rely on it. I quickly went out and bought another external drive.
Investigation of the second backup drive suggests that the disk controller is the problem and not the hard disk itself but I haven't got around to buying a new enclosure. I should do that... Cheers Brian ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Brian Walters Western Sydney Australia http://lyons-ryan.org/southernlight/ On Saturday, November 05, 2011 10:09 PM, "Mark C" <pdml-m...@charter.net> wrote: > Your post motivated me to play around with my archives and I made a > startling discovery - my main USB drive is not working properly. I works > fine for about 10 - 15 minutes after I turn it on, but after that if > gets flaky and then disappears as an active drive. I don't know when it > went wonky - the last major update I did was in early August. At that > time it would have been active for far more than 10 minutes or so, but > as recently as a few days ago I was powering it up, grabbing a file, and > then powering it down... > > Thankfully I have another drive that is a replica as of the last major > backup. There is also a clone at a local data center through a local IT > support company. But right now, this drive is crap - it will work for 10 > to 15 minutes and then powers down and won't show up again till it has > been powered off for a while. I'll be taking it to my local repair shop > (also the data host for remote backup) to see if the problem is the > drive or the housing. It is a 3TB WD myBook drive and the housing may > be proprietary - don't know if they can find a generic housing to pop > it into. I hope that the worst case scenario is that the drive becomes a > local SATA drive in my PC -thoug I guess the really worse case scenario > is that the drive itself - and not the housing - is failing. > > Sheesh! > > Mark C. > > On 11/4/2011 3:50 AM, David Mann wrote: > > I keep all of my photo files on a USB hard drive, and every-so-often I > > think "I really must get around to setting up some kind of backup." But > > it's a lot of data and I kept putting it off. > > > > Yesterday the drive started making horrible clicking noises while > > performing a Time Machine backup. I stopped the backup and shut the drive > > down. It was working, but slowly, and I didn't want to push my luck. > > > > As poor timing would have it, a significant chunk of the world's hard drive > > manufacturing capacity is currently under water so prices have recently > > shot up. I was lucky to find a retailer who not only had stock at a > > reasonable price, they actually had a discount! So a brand new 2Tb drive > > is on my desk. > > > > Luckily I was able to lift all of my data off. I started with my "K10D" > > folder as that's the most important one (I still have a copy of my "Scanned > > Slides" folder on another old hdd). > > > > So now I'm back to thinking "perhaps I should set up some better backups." > > I might pop back down to the shop and get a second drive in the weekend... > > > > Cheers, > > Dave > > > > > -- -- http://www.fastmail.fm - Or how I learned to stop worrying and love email again -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
