So that's what happens when you unplug a hard drive without unmounting it...

[Lucianrider]

Rules To Live By:

1) Always Backup Your Data

2) Always Eject/Dismount External Drives before walking off.



I realize that hindsight is always 20/20, but I live by those rules thanks to the mistakes others have made before me.


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You must be seriously anal then!! I have a 1 TB external drive for my TM back up and you expect me to eject and dismount it every time I walk away from the machine???

I'm with the thread starter on this one. This is an issue that needs to be corrected by both the hard drive manufacturers and Apple.

 

[fattire357]

So, you're angry at Apple because your wife corrupted your data, which you hadn't backed up?

I'm not angry at Apple, just suffering a loss of trust, because a decade of using windows this never happened to me, and 1 year of using an Apple and it has.

The point of my post wasn't to express my loss of trust though but rather to enlighten the public about actually really listening to that warning window, as opposed to a decade of using a windows machine and having no issue with ignoring it.

Which, by the way guys, I only posted here to help one another out and say what can happen under certain circumstances so others are well prepared.

It's mean to just send me all these replies saying its my fault (by extension, implying I should just shut it). You aren't representing this community very well or making an open environment for people to talk.

 

[crows]

this is part of the reason I tell my wife to remain clear of any of my electronic equipment lol, anyway you are right to speak out about this type of problem its 2012 we shouldn't worry about ejecting, it should just warn you that if you pull the plug while it's copying files then it might corrupt THOSE files, but like someone said this might be a freak parking head issue because there's no real reason for the OS to be writing to the partition tables on idle. This type of problem might go away when SSD's become the norm, no more mechanical or movement issues.

 

[blueroom]

Since we're bumping an old thread, what do you do now to keep the same thing from happening?
Do you backup your data?

 

[doray]

The reason you should eject a HDD or flash drive before unplugging it is because that stops all reading/writing to the drive before its unplugged. That way the drive won't be cut off in the middle of a writing operation and thus corrupt the data. That goes for any drive on any computer with any operating system.

This may be a silly question, but… I know if a disk is improperly disconnected, that can cause corruption on that disk. But can it cause problems with the computer as well, such as with the file directory? And if it did cause problems with the computer, would those be limited to how it relates to the disk in question?

 

[S.B.G]

This may be a silly question, but… I know if a disk is improperly disconnected, that can cause corruption on that disk. But can it cause problems with the computer as well, such as with the file directory? And if it did cause problems with the computer, would those be limited to how it relates to the disk in question?

To the best of my knowledge, it shouldn't have a negative effect on the computer except that it might freeze up or throw some errors at you. A reboot would resolve that. But anything is possible.

 

[doray]

The reason you should eject a HDD or flash drive before unplugging it is because that stops all reading/writing to the drive before its unplugged. That way the drive won't be cut off in the middle of a writing operation and thus corrupt the data. That goes for any drive on any computer with any operating system.

Thank you!

 

[iemcj]

Hmm. This got me to thinking, I have a raid storage system across two 5 tb harddrives. So if one fails, the second one is backed up for redundancy. How would this effect this issue? From what I remember reading, my computer is direclty reading and writing to 1 of the harddrives and the internal circuitry is constantly duplicating the data to the second drive. In this situation, if something is unplugged and you get that disconnect corruption, would the second hardrive still be safe?

On a side note, a lot of you guys are being complete dicks to the OP. He asked a question, he knew full well what caused the problem and specifically said "before I get any flaming about what I could have done better". Clearly he didn't do it on purpose and it was literally someone else who did it. I guarantee every single person here has accidentally unplugged a thumb drive or hardrive at some point and if you say you haven't, you're a liar. It happens no matter how careful you are. I see half a dozen responses on this page of pretentious pricks saying crap like "well u shoulda back up in other places lulz". Seriously? The guy has a problem right NOW and that kinda crap isn't helping anyone. Knock it off. Piling on with stuff that's already been said is helping no one.

 

[grahamperrin]

… corrupted partition map …

… there was no need for the OS to write to the partition table as it was idling …

… guess it is hard to tell if it is the OS or the firmware of the hard drive …

I can think of no situation where an untimely disconnect would cause OS X to corrupt the partition map.

Years ago I had trouble with a LaCie enclosure with two drives presented (to the computer) as one. An untimely disconnect caused problems and (if I recall correctly) it was necessary to use LaCie software to reinstall the firmware.