Author Topic: Maybe another bad drive enclosure! (Read 1966 times)

Xairbusdriver · « **on:** February 28, 2011, 11:53:26 AM »

For the past few days, my 2TB, two partition, external drive has been self-ejecting itself (without any dialog indicating any reason). Usually, turning it off/on makes the iMac 'see' it again. Occasionally, it takes more than one off/on cycle. The drive (2.0TB Seagate Barracuda XT SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache) and the enclosure (Newer Technology miniStack v3 eSATA/FireWire 400/800/USB2.0 Enclosure Kit) are only a few months old. This combo replaced a 1GB setup that had a power supply problem. That was repaired and is now being used elsewhere in the house.

There appear only two potential paths of trouble-shooting, neither of which is particularly exciting:

Actually, there is another place in town that services Macs. Back when the internal drive was replaced by Apple, I asked about installing a larger drive and was told they would only replace the bad one with the same size. But, they suggested that I could take it to the other service facility if I wanted a larger drive installed.

I'm not aware of any software method of testing this kind of problem.

However, I just increased the fan speeds via iStat Menus even though the temps don't seem any warmer than normal (and much cooler than when I was running the Folding@Home, cpu intensive software last year!).

jchuzi · « **Reply #1 on:** February 28, 2011, 12:20:53 PM »

I would suspect the hard drive itself. Seagate, from all that I have been reading lately, has a lot of quality control problems. You could always install a different drive in the enclosure and, if the problem goes away, you'll know that the old drive was responsible.

FWIW, my Mac Pro shipped with a Seagate 250 GB drive. It never sounded right to me and I replaced it with Hitachi (I have 4 altogether in that machine). The Seagate hadn't failed, mind you, but I didn't trust it. The Hitachis have never given a hint of a problem.

Xairbusdriver · « **Reply #2 on:** February 28, 2011, 01:52:29 PM »

I agree with your opinion about Hitachi. I think I went with Seagate, this time, because of its five-year warranty and its improved quality reports. But, your option may be quicker and less data-lossey (Would you believe Dictionary didn't complain about that word?)

Two 'normal' words with a hyphen, a good words makes...

I think I'll call/email OWC this afternoon. Beats getting my taxes started.

Xairbusdriver · « **Reply #3 on:** February 28, 2011, 07:42:03 PM »

Decided to run applejack and then some TechTool tests. Rebooted into the SuperDuper backup and ran the surface scan on the internal drive. 976,773,168 blocks, no bad ones reported. The tests and a few other tasks have been running on the external drive for nearly two hours, so far. Upped the cpu fan speed to the max (~3300rpm), highest temp is 107 in the "HD Bay 1", cpu A=97, ambient is 77.

I also ran some RAM tests and may do some more extensive ones next. Then, I plan to run the disk scan on the external drive, assuming it can do that while booted from it. That will probably take over two hours. If things are still running after that. I'm shutting down for the night and we'll see if I can get some tax work done tomorrow. I haven't actually looked at any logs since the freezes seem to be so random.

Xairbusdriver · « **Reply #4 on:** March 01, 2011, 10:19:40 AM »

RMA request sent. Disconnected the drive/enclosure several hours ago and everything (except Time Machine, of course) is running normally. Now, I just need to refrain from creating any new files for a few days...

BTW, I did not do a surface scan on the 2TB drive...actually I stopped the test with 13+ hours remaining...but that was with the system booted from that drive. It may actually be quicker with it simply mounted as a drive. At any rate, I hope to get an RMA and have the enclosure back before this time next week.

Xairbusdriver · « **Reply #5 on:** March 03, 2011, 07:41:35 PM »

RMA email came today, I'll probably be way too busy to get the thing shipped tomorrow (Friday). I sincerely hope the problem is the enclosure.

Xairbusdriver · « **Reply #6 on:** March 10, 2011, 04:33:26 PM »

Returned the enclosure Monday, got the replacement this morning. Finally able to make backups, again!

Got seriously worried yesterday because an update or install really made things crazy for a while! Lost items off Finder window app bar, music app lost track of where the LAME bundle was, etc. I think the problem was installing a new version of Flip4Mac!

daryl66 · « **Reply #7 on:** March 11, 2011, 11:18:53 AM »

QUOTE(Xairbusdriver @ Mar 10 2011, 05:33 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think the problem was installing a new version of Flip4Mac!

Can you elaborate a bit?

Xairbusdriver · « **Reply #8 on:** March 11, 2011, 03:02:35 PM »

I have never trusted a "free" app that asks you to upgrade to a paid version right in the installer.

The main reason is that the thing uses an installer and makes connections to the System to intercept double-clicks or opening a particular file suffix. None of the other apps I installed in the past few days were anything more than drag and drop. However, I was in a particularly 'install-happy' mood and didn't notice things changing until too many installs.

"Haste Makes Wasted Worries!"

The other 'weird' app/hack, however, LetterBox, could just as well be the culprit.

It is now gone, however.

The system corruptions included preferences defaulting to 'presets' in numerous apps, apps disappearing from Finder window Tool Bar and even simple, standard keyboard commands failing. A Restart and resetting the obvious missing info/prefs got things back to normal but it was more worrying than normal since I was without a convenient means of back until yesterday afternoon!

News:

Author Topic: Maybe another bad drive enclosure! (Read 1966 times)