External HD help

Ray022085 · Feb 1, 2011

Hey, i'm new to this forum, i refer a lot to it for odd mac issues, but have never signed up until now.
I'm having a problem with a HD i put in an external case, i'm using a Samsung HD103sj, and when the drive goes is standby for some time it won't respond to any access through my mac (time machine, or finder). time machine will do the spinning sync logo, and finder will pull up files to a certain point then once it realizes that the drive isn't spinning it will beach ball on me. the only way to stop this freeze up is to turn it off. if i just unplug it and plug it back in, the platters still won't spin when it's plug in again.
Thanks for your advice.

harryb2448 · Feb 1, 2011

G'day and welcome to he forums.

Has the drive been formatted and partitioned in Disk Utility?

Connect the external drive, go into Disk Utility and see if the drive is recognised in the left hand column. If so select it and format Mac OS Extended (Journalled) and partition even if for only a single partition. Go to Options under Partition and select GUID if your computer is an Intel model, and Apple Partition Map if a PowerPC such as a G5 or G4.

When seeking advice always quote your Mac model and operating system please. Also if you have a PowerPC you will need a Firewire connection as USB is just too slow.

Ray022085 · Feb 1, 2011

harryb2448 said:
G'day and welcome to he forums.

Has the drive been formatted and partitioned in Disk Utility?

Connect the external drive, go into Disk Utility and see if the drive is recognized in the left hand column. If so select it and format Mac OS Extended (Journalled) and partition even if for only a single partition. Go to Options under Partition and select GUID if your computer is an Intel model, and Apple Partition Map if a PowerPC such as a G5 or G4.

When seeking advice always quote your Mac model and operating system please. Also if you have a PowerPC you will need a Firewire connection as USB is just too slow.

Thank you, the drive has been formatted Mac OS extended: 375Gb are for time machine, and the rest is for storage (out of 1Tb pre-formatted). I've been using the drive for just over two months, and within the past two weeks this has been happening. i had a 250Gb in this same enclosure for the past 3 years, and no problems with any of my macs with that setup. I'm just wondering if it's a HD issue, but Samsung doesn't have any diagnostic tools, otherwise i don't know how to test.

i'm on an 09 macbook pro running OS X 10.6, connected via firewire (800 to 400)

Randy B. Singer · Feb 1, 2011

A huge problem for Macintosh users in the past year or so has been hard drives (especially Western Digital hard drives) that use energy saving software to go to sleep to save energy. Often this renders the drive just about unusable with a Macintosh, and even worse, companies only offer software to turn off the energy saving features for Windows.

I'd call Samsung and see what they can do for you. The drive has to still be under warranty if you have only had it for two months. If they can't help you with the problem they should replace the drive with a more suitable model.

___________________________________________

Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
OS X Maintenance And Troubleshooting
___________________________________________

Ray022085 · Feb 3, 2011

Randy B. Singer said:
A huge problem for Macintosh users in the past year or so has been hard drives (especially Western Digital hard drives) that use energy saving software to go to sleep to save energy. Often this renders the drive just about unusable with a Macintosh, and even worse, companies only offer software to turn off the energy saving features for Windows.

I'd call Samsung and see what they can do for you. The drive has to still be under warranty if you have only had it for two months. If they can't help you with the problem they should replace the drive with a more suitable model.

___________________________________________

Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
OS X Maintenance And Troubleshooting
___________________________________________

yeah, it seems like it's more of an issue in how it goes into stanby. i'll give them a call today. thanks for the advice!

Ray022085 · Feb 3, 2011

I just got off the phone with Samsung, they said they do not know if there is a power setting that is not compatable. furthermore, they said unless i use a PC i can't run a diagnostic. and i can't find a SMART utility that is able to scan the drive, even though he was pretty certain that the drive was not failing.

MacBozo · Feb 3, 2011

Ray022085 said:
I just got off the phone with Samsung, they said they do not know if there is a power setting that is not compatable. furthermore, they said unless i use a PC i can't run a diagnostic. and i can't find a SMART utility that is able to scan the drive, even though he was pretty certain that the drive was not failing.

It might be the bus in the enclosure that is failing. I had that happen to one of mine a couple of years ago. Put the drive into another enclosure and it worked just fine.

Randy B. Singer · Feb 3, 2011

Ray022085 said:
I just got off the phone with Samsung, they said they do not know if there is a power setting that is not compatable. furthermore, they said unless i use a PC i can't run a diagnostic. and i can't find a SMART utility that is able to scan the drive, even though he was pretty certain that the drive was not failing.

[S.M.A.R.T. doesn't work on external drives.]

So basically they told you that they don't really support Mac users, that they have no idea what the problem is, but they want to blame it on you or your Mac, not on their drive. They didn't even offer to check the drive out for you? Or to help you in any other way?

This is, sadly, an inherent problem with assembling your own external hard drive. If you don't deal with companies that are really into great support for customers, if you have a problem the case vendor will blame the drive vendor, and vice versa, and they both may blame you or your Mac.

Did you recently purchase this drive? Can you return it, or cancel the charge on your credit card? That's what I would do.

___________________________________________

Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
OS X Maintenance And Troubleshooting
___________________________________________

Ray022085 · Feb 3, 2011

Randy B. Singer said:
[S.M.A.R.T. doesn't work on external drives.]

So basically they told you that they don't really support Mac users, that they have no idea what the problem is, but they want to blame it on you or your Mac, not on their drive. They didn't even offer to check the drive out for you? Or to help you in any other way?

This is, sadly, an inherent problem with assembling your own external hard drive. If you don't deal with companies that are really into great support for customers, if you have a problem the case vendor will blame the drive vendor, and vice versa, and they both may blame you or your Mac.

Did you recently purchase this drive? Can you return it, or cancel the charge on your credit card? That's what I would do.

___________________________________________

Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
OS X Maintenance And Troubleshooting
___________________________________________

they didn't actually blame it on my mac, they merely said i'm S.O.L. for using a mac...i can't return anything, the enclosure is 3 years old, and the drive is under two months, but... newegg has never made returns easy for me... i'm wondering if i can make a windows partition and plug it into a PC to see if it will still freeze up. if it does, i can fun their diagnostics on it and see what i can find. does anyone see any problems with this (or potential loss of data)?

spin498 · Feb 4, 2011

Ray022085 said:
they didn't actually blame it on my mac, they merely said i'm S.O.L. for using a mac...i can't return anything, the enclosure is 3 years old, and the drive is under two months, but... newegg has never made returns easy for me... i'm wondering if i can make a windows partition and plug it into a PC to see if it will still freeze up. if it does, i can fun their diagnostics on it and see what i can find. does anyone see any problems with this (or potential loss of data)?

If you can plug it into a Win PC and it powers up I don't think you need to partition it for Samsung's diagnostic software to work as it runs on it's own DOS software and examines the raw clusters.

Ray022085 · Feb 21, 2011

well over the weekend i had the drive go non-responsive 9 times. i made a windows partitions, took it out of the case and i'm bringing it into work to use on a PC and see if it will do the same. This is just getting ridiculous because every time it goes non responsive and time machine tries to access it and the OS freezes up. I lost a 3 hour photoshop project i was working on! hopefully at this rate i can run samsung's tools on it for diagnostics if it does continue to fail.

Ray022085 · Feb 22, 2011

still thinking

i'm wondering about trying another enclosure, the problem is, i'm having trouble finding a 3.5HDD firewire (either 400 or 800) SATAIII enclosure for a reasonable amount of money. i'm wondering if someone can point me to one. i ran the drive yesterday in a PC and there were no issues... i'll continue to run it, but i'm starting to look at other options now.

Randy B. Singer · Feb 22, 2011

Ray022085 said:
...i'm having trouble finding a 3.5HDD firewire (either 400 or 800) SATAIII enclosure for a reasonable amount of money. i'm wondering if someone can point me to one.

I haven't tried either of these since I don't generally recommend external case kits anymore. So this isn't a "recommendation", just pointing out what is available.

StarTech SAT3510U2F Aluminum 3.5" Silver USB2.0 & 1394a External
Enclosure
Includes an Oxford chipset and is for SATA drives. No fan.
$40 with $5 shipping
StarTech SAT3510U2F 3.5 SATA to USB/FW400 Hard Drive Enclosure at TigerDirect.com
or
StarTech SAT3510U2F 3.5 SATA to USB/FW400 Hard Drive Enclosure at TigerDirect.com
More info:
http://us.startech.com/media/products/SAT3510U2F/PDFs/SAT3510U2F.pdf

also: Techonweb.com - STARTECH.COM SAT3510U2F StarTech.com 3.5in USB FireWire External Hard Drive Enclosure 065030837750

Acomdata Samba 701 Combo HD Encl BLK
USB, Firewire, for SATA drives. No fan.
$40 free shipping
Buy.com - AcomData Samba SMBXXXU2FE-BLK Hard Drive Enclosure
or
Buy.com - AcomData Samba SMBXXXU2FE-BLK Hard Drive Enclosure
More info:
AcomData-3.5" Samba USB & FireWire A (SATA Drive) Enclosure Kit(SMBXXXU2FE-BLK)
http://www.acomdata.com/webimages/200911617436572_PS-SMBxxxU2FE-xxx-v1E.pdf

___________________________________________

Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
OS X Maintenance And Troubleshooting
___________________________________________

Ray022085 · Feb 22, 2011

thanks for the pointers. i'm testing my case with another HDD (to rule out a bad enclosure) while my friend is testing my HDD in his PC (to rule out HDD failure). strange thing is though, my HDD won't spin up in the one thermaltake Back X we have here, i don't know if that's saying anything... but it's certainty odd. if you have any further testing ideas PLEASE let me know... i think i may run a few PC disk check utilities on it... but that's all i got now.

One of the guys at work mentioned XP have a setting on whether or not the OS will let a drive go to sleep, i think he mentioned it works for external drives as well... does OS X 10.6 have something like this?