internal drive not showing up

[tomf]

I have 3 hard drives in my mac pro, all internal, which have been fine up until a week ago, now for some reason Drive 3 seems to not show up sometimes.

I see it on the desktop, but then if i go to open a file from it, say an mp3, it doesnt load it. It says the file is 0 bytes.
Other times the drive simply isnt showing up at all.

I have to restart the mac and its ok then.

Anyone have any ideas or help on this problem?

Thanks

 

[Weaselboy]

Sounds like the drive is bad. Can you see it in Disk Utility and do a verify disk to check for errors?

 

[ActionableMango]

I don't know, but if you don't already have an existing backup solution in place, I strongly urge you to back up that drive while you are able to read from it.

If you do have an existing backup solution in place, I recommend you check the backup to ensure it is working (try restoring a file or two).

 

[Gav Mack]

I don't know, but if you don't already have an existing backup solution in place, I strongly urge you to back up that drive while you are able to read from it.

If you do have an existing backup solution in place, I recommend you check the backup to ensure it is working (try restoring a file or two).

Sounds like the drive is going into limp mode and failing. The towers make so much noise with others in the sleds its hard to hear the drive failing or how high it's spinning up. I use a stethoscope (!) though a rolled up piece of paper like a funnel, one end in your lug and the other next to the drive you should be able to hear what the disk is doing.

Get the data off it ASAP regardless, the longer you leave it the more expensive data recovery is.