Uh oh- It's M'hard Drive.

[pdpfilms]

Howdy-
After both my housemates lost ~200gb of data each on two different hard drive failures in two days, I began feeling smug that I have a fully redundant system. ...Except for one drive. I have one 250gb drive that is not backed up, and contians all my ripped DVDs. Just today it has begun sleeping itself, after a period of inactivity. Actually, scratch that. It just sleeped itself in the middle of a movie. There was a little click like it was shutting off, and then the movie stopped. Anyway, why might this be? is it too hot? Is it beginning to fail (eek!)? I don't have the option checked in the Energy Saver preferences pane, so that can't be causing it. My other external is acting normally. Just yesterday I installed the most recent security update. Maybe that's the issue?

Any ideas?

EDIT: Actually, I'm getting quite worried. I just turned it off and on (it wouldn't allow me to eject it), and it did the same thing, after about 2 minutes of use.

thanks.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Guess -- the power brick of the external drive is shutting off from overheating. We saw this a lot with LaCie drives a little while back. The AC adaptors were not up to the task of powering 200 Gb + drives for extended periods.

 

[pdpfilms]

Guess -- the power brick of the external drive is shutting off from overheating. We saw this a lot with LaCie drives a little while back. The AC adaptors were not up to the task of powering 200 Gb + drives for extended periods.

I like the sound of that one... but I'm feeling that isn't the problem. The power brick feels fine, just a bit warm. And I've been running this drive pretty much constantly for the past few weeks. Maybe too much use and it's... tired?

 

[CanadaRAM]

I like the sound of that one... but I'm feeling that isn't the problem. The power brick feels fine, just a bit warm. And I've been running this drive pretty much constantly for the past few weeks. Maybe too much use and it's... tired?

Well, when it 'clicks', does the drive spin down? And the drive later works OK again after being off for a while? That would be classic powersupply failure symptoms. It may even spin back up on its own a moment later, but of course whatever file operation you were doing at the time is #*#$*ed.

 

[pdpfilms]

Well, when it 'clicks', does the drive spin down? And the drive later works OK again after being off for a while? That would be classic powersupply failure symptoms. It may even spin back up on its own a moment later, but of course whatever file operation you were doing at the time is #*#$*ed.

Yeah, it spins down. However, the LED stays illuminated.. but that could be from USB power? I'll have to call up OWC Monday and see what they have to say.