External Hard Drive Help

I have a 250GB Westernal Digital Passport. It's titled "supernova" so i'll refer to it that way from now on. This summer I started using time machine on it. So there's the time machine folder on it and then a folder where I keep movies and tv shows. Yesterday I went into the time machine folder and deleted some of my old backups (I read somewhere you could just delete the folders). Today I got an error message from time machine saying

"Time machine could not complete the backup. The backup disk is not available."

Then I went looking in supernova and found that my videos folder was missing. So tried to repair it with Disk Utility but also got an error message saying the drive could not be unmounted (happens every time). After I try repairing it the videos folder comes back up but there are no files in it.

When I "get info" on supernova it says there is only 37 gigs free, which leads me to believe that all of my videos are still on there. I could care less about salvaging my time machine backups, but I obviously don't want to loose my movies.

Can anyone help me on this?

Thanks

You're probably going to need some heavy duty recovery software to access that drive and get your video files back. What I suggest is giving the Disk Warrior trial a go to see if it can recover your files. If it can, buy a license. ($99)

BTW, I personally do not recommend keeping Time Machine backups on the same drive as other data. It works OK but when something happens to the drive, it causes more problems than it's worth.

Regards.

tried disk warrior. i used the rebuild and the file methods. long story short, that still didn't fix it so i put my mac into safe mode and the videos showed up then.

i transferred them over to my friends external and am going to reformat mine and do things differently this time.

OK, great. Glad to hear you got your videos back. Hopefully, you didn't have to buy Disk Warrior to find out it didn't work? (It's great software to have around in case... though)

Regards.

brycimus said:

Yesterday I went into the time machine folder and deleted some of my old backups

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This was your error.

Don't do this. TM will handle the deleting of old backups by itself and does not respond favourably when you mess with it.

now i'm trying to format it and use carbon copy cloner, but i constantly get a "could not eject drive" message when i try to format it, it happens every time. what does this mean?

I've seen that before with an external that was defective. Try running Disk Utility first and do a verify and repair. Let's see what happens. If that drive is acting up for some reason, you don't want to use for a CCC clone.

If DU balks at checking the drive, contact WD and ask for a RMA. I'm assuming the drive is less than three years old?

Regards.

yah its less than 3 years old for sure. i've run disk utility from my leopard disk (booting up from it) and i've reformatted it and i still get the same message. after i formatted it i even tried setting it up as FAT and just transferring my brothers movie collection and i got an error message. i can't remember exactly what it said but basically i can format it only by booting up in the SL disk and after that i'll eventually get an error message one way or another...leading to the "can't unmount drive" message yet again. at this point i'm either ready to toss it, if WD doesn't give me a replacement. i can't believe it's completely broken, but i just don't know what the problem is, i've tried it on multiple macs and get the same message.

I understand your frustration. The newer enclosed drives from WD, Seagate, iOmega, etc, all use an interface which allows USB. The problem with the newer ones like your WD is that it's been integrated on the drive itself so that you can't even remove it from the case and make it work.

Contact WD support and ask for a RMA. They'll probably ask you to run some tests or some such other, but they'll wind up replacing it for you. WD is generally real good about making good on their warranty.

Regards.

yup, i emailed WD i'm getting an RMA so i should have a replacement in about a couple weeks

brycimus said:

yup, i emailed WD i'm getting an RMA so i should have a replacement in about a couple weeks

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Wow. Glad you are getting a new drive. I must say though the couple of week wait would drive me nuts.

The last time that happened in my Mac Pro with Apple Care they had a new drive in mu hands in about three days. I then put the old drive in the box and shipped it back to them. If I had failed to do so they would have me charged full price for the drive.