Dealing With a Troubled Hard Drive and Snow Leopard

[Huntn]

I've got a USB external Hard drive (3 partitions) that I'm trying to move data off of, but apparently MacOS 10.6 is fighting me. This drive has set unused for about 4 months since my G5 died. Now I'm trying to pull the info off of it, but I'm seeing lots of spinning beach balls.

It seems that one of the primary problems is that the OS insists on indexing this volume which is interfering with my ability to rescue this data. Since I've plugged the drive in, the OS has been trying to index it, but it's been reading indexed 6% for the last 2 hours. Is there any way to tell if indexing is making headway or it is stalled?

I can't run Disk Warrior or Disk Utility with long periods of spinning beachballs, and even if they start running it takes forever. I just got Disk Utility up, but I get a message that two of the partitions can't be unmounted. One of those partitions is being indexed. Logically, I think I should run these utilities first and make sure I've got a good catalog.

Is there anyway I can stop the OS from indexing this volume so I can verify I've got good data to rescue? Thanks!

Edit: I found this link. Is using the Terminal the only way? Thanks!

 

[Huntn]

I've given up on this problem drive. It's partitions mount on the Desktop, but they can't be accessed. I've tried repairs with Disk Utility which gives up telling me that it can't unmount the drive or the partitions. Disk Warrior, basically crashes and makes me restart my computer (I have the latest version.)

Now I'm trying to start from scratch and re-partition the drive, but Drive Utility just spins when I try to select the partition page for this hard drive. I'm ready to start over from scratch, but if I can't get Disk Utility too cooperate is there other software out there that can force the drive to be initialized? Can it be done in the terminal?
Thanks!

 

[blueroom]

Sounds like the USB HDD is pining for the dust bin. How old was it?

 

[Huntn]

Sounds like the USB HDD is pining for the dust bin. How old was it?

It's about 7 years old. It's headed for recycling. I've spent most of today messing with getting my storage back in order. Fortunately my important stuff was backed up. What I discovered after purchasing a Disk Warrior update just to deal with this problem. I AM NOT impressed with DW! If any of the hard drives are not just right, it just sits there and spins and spins and spins to its little heart's content. Odd behavior for something designed specifically to deal with problem drives. Yeah when everything is fine, it does a good job of rebuilding directories, but I'd never depend upon it as my sole utility for this kind of work. I am very unhappy with it. I might have to go buy a Tech Tool upgrade...