TimeMachine issues

[fgduthie]

Hi all,

I have a Seagate 3Tb hard drive that I was using as a Time Machine for about 2.5 years. Halfway through a backup, it all of a sudden stopped accepting the drive. Now on startup every day it says that there is an "uninitialised drive" which is the Time Machine.

I can't reset the drive as it is unable to mount it, am I right in thinking that the drive is completely dead or is there a way to resurrect it?

Many thanks for any help

Fraser

 

[0009827]

Sounds dead to me.

 

[fgduthie]

Sounds dead to me.

What I feared but I was holding out hope. Many thanks

 

[Fishrrman]

Well, if you think the drive "has died", I'd try using Disk Utility to erase it to Mac OS extended with journaling enabled.

Does the erase succeed?
If not, the drive probably has suffered a hardware failure. It's toast.

IF the erase succeeds, then run the "repair disk" function on it.
Do you get "a good report"?

IF you do, REPEAT THIS TEST FIVE TIMES in succession.
Do you get a good report every time?

IF you do, I'd keep using the drive for "non-critical" storage.
By that I mean "stuff you want a copy of, but won't cry about if it's lost".

Suggestion:
Toshiba and Hitachi (HGST) drives have a better reliability record...