Can you stop my USB Drive hating me?

October 22, 2007 6:48 PM

I need to stop my external (USB) drive having a petulant fit (and hiding/refusing to play ball) on an annoyingly regular basis during normal service. How?

I have a MacBook Pro. I bought a Maxtor 15Gb hard drive a month or so ago (possibly two). I have never even moved this drive more than a few feet (never mind dropped it) yet it has started playing up.

When I try and transfer stuff backwards and forwards, it often will crash the finder, freeze the operation entirely and sulk. There seems to be no pattern to when it does this. No matter how long I wait, it will only do anything after unplugging it (with appropriate hissy fit from the OS about losing data for not ejecting an unresponsive drive - meh). Plug it all back in (sometimes this needs to be done twice) and all is well and it will work normally for a bit.

During the crash, Finder is totally screwed. Relaunching the finder (as I initially assumed was the issue) will mean none of the desktop icons reappear, it is still frozen, but everything will come back (instantly, and with a bump) when I unplug the USB drive.

Any ideas why this is happening? Or shall I take the stuff off it and launch it back at the shop with suitable stern words (possibly involving Gratuitous use of the word fuck, although possibly not enough to warrant a Rory).

posted by Brockles to computers & internet (3 comments total)

The hard drive inside the enclosure is toast. Return it and get a new one.
posted by unSane at 7:19 PM on October 22, 2007

That disk is definitely faulty, factory defective. Get your data off it now, this minute. Then return it to PofP.

Don't be too cranky with the shop. This just happens once in a while. But do ask for a different model, in case their whole lot of your current model is bad.
posted by OlderThanTOS at 8:19 PM on October 22, 2007

Does your drive have an external power supply? I've seen this happen with hard disk that try to draw power from the usb, when the port won't supply enough current to spin the motor. Try plugging it into a powered USB hub and see if it works any better.

Do get your data off ASAP though, like OlderThanTOS says - there's a good chance your drive is toast.
posted by the number 17 at 10:51 PM on October 22, 2007