External Hard Drive

[billinden]

My Seagate FreeAgent external drive has a problem. It's several years old, but still has over half capacity. Not sure if it's half empty or half full (joke). Anyway, I get this message that Time Machine cannot connect to the current back up disk. I've tried turning everything off and back on again. I also went into Disk Utility and tried to do some first aid, but got a message that updating boot support partitions for the volume as required. Unable to unmount volume for repair. Operation failed. Is my Seagate fried? Any suggestions would be appreciated. I can't afford a new one right now.

 

[badshoehabit]

Same here; gave in and bought a new one.

 

[chscag]

Any suggestions would be appreciated. I can't afford a new one right now.

About the only thing I can suggest is to keep trying to see if Disk Utility will unmount the drive so it can try to do a repair.

It may be that the enclosure has failed and the drive itself is okay. The cheap fragile enclosures used by Seagate and Western Digital usually can not be repaired or replaced.

In any event, even if you can do a repair on that drive, it can no longer be trusted for backup use.

 

[MacInWin]

My Seagate FreeAgent external drive has a problem. It's several years old, but still has over half capacity. Not sure if it's half empty or half full (joke). Anyway, I get this message that Time Machine cannot connect to the current back up disk. I've tried turning everything off and back on again. I also went into Disk Utility and tried to do some first aid, but got a message that updating boot support partitions for the volume as required. Unable to unmount volume for repair. Operation failed. Is my Seagate fried? Any suggestions would be appreciated. I can't afford a new one right now.

I'm confused, sorry. I gather that this drive is your TM backup? (You didn't say, exactly, just said TM cannot connect to some drive.) What I would try is to turn off Time Machine on the Mac, power down the Mac, then disconnect the drive, power the Mac back on, let the boot finish and then connect the drive. See then if Disk Utility can do the repairs it says are needed. Keep TM turned off for the process. Once the drive is repaired, you can turn TM back on, but if it is indeed using that drive, you cannot trust it, as Charlie said. You'll need a replacement as soon as you can.

 

[Drgnldy1]

About the only thing I can suggest is to keep trying to see if Disk Utility will unmount the drive so it can try to do a repair.

It may be that the enclosure has failed and the drive itself is okay. The cheap fragile enclosures used by Seagate and Western Digital usually can not be repaired or replaced.

In any event, even if you can do a repair on that drive, it can no longer be trusted for backup use.

When you say "cheap fragile enclosures" do you mean the cases, or something else. Just curious. I've been using Western Digital external portable hard drives for many years and have never had problems.

 

[IWT]

cheap fragile enclosures

It refers to the "body" or "case" or "enclosure" that surrounds the drive itself - the drive being internal. There are connection between drive and enclosure and if they are "fragile" and break or malfunction, the drive becomes useless - BUT could still be in working condition.

As an example, here are a couple of Amazon links which will give you an idea what I'm talking about:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=2.5+in...sures,aps,176&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_16&tag=

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=3.5+inch+hard+drive+enclosure&ref=nb_sb_noss_1&tag=

This is for info only. I'm not saying you should buy one - although people have done when the data on a drive was critical.

Ian

 

[Drgnldy1]

It refers to the "body" or "case" or "enclosure" that surrounds the drive itself - the drive being internal. There are connection between drive and enclosure and if they are "fragile" and break or malfunction, the drive becomes useless - BUT could still be in working condition.

As an example, here are a couple of Amazon links which will give you an idea what I'm talking about:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=2.5+inch+hard+drive+enclosure&crid=Q6TRWXYAKVNV&sprefix=Drive+enclosures,aps,176&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_16&tag=

Amazon.co.uk : 3.5 inch hard drive enclosure

This is for info only. I'm not saying you should buy one - although people have done when the data on a drive was critical.

Ian

Thank you for the information. Much appreciated. I have rarely used my WD drives outside of my home - I use them for hard drive backup. I was probably unlikely to have this kind of issue.

 

[lclev]

Thank you for the information. Much appreciated. I have rarely used my WD drives outside of my home - I use them for hard drive backup. I was probably unlikely to have this kind of issue.

Just FYI - I have had to send two WD external backup drives in to WD for replacement. They were both used for backup and never moved before they failed. Both were replaced under warrantee and are still working but - all drives will fail at some point. I use multiple backups so I did not loose any data. That said, WD is still my preferred hard drive company.

Lisa

 

[Drgnldy1]

Just FYI - I have had to send two WD external backup drives in to WD for replacement. They were both used for backup and never moved before they failed. Both were replaced under warrantee and are still working but - all drives will fail at some point. I use multiple backups so I did not loose any data. That said, WD is still my preferred hard drive company.

Lisa

I have a number of older WD drives and I've always had multiple backups. I use Time Machine and also just copy all my working files to another external drive. I use Time Machine every day that I use my Mac and backup data files separately about twice a week. I learned the hard way many years ago on a PC. I was able to retrieve many files using DOS commands but after that, multiple backups.