External HD keeps mounting and unmounting for no reason.. Help!

C

Chocamine

Registered
Hey guys,

I am running a 2007 Imac. Version 10.5.8. 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. 4 GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM and am using my Macintosh HD as my Startup Disk.

I have been starting to have some issues with my external hard drive (500gb Western Digital, connected via USB and power supply).

I've never had a problem with it before, but now it seems that when it "mounts", it stays connected and workable for about 30 seconds and then it unmounts and dissapears and I get a "bad device removal" message.

I don't want to lose anything on the HD so for now I just turned it off. I am planning on using DiskWarrior to attempt to repair it.

If, for instance, it is "fried" and cannot stay mounted, is there any way I can transfer the info onto another HD?

As you guys can see, I'm a TOTAL noob, so any help would be extremely appreciated.

And no, I did not change anything on my computer recently, this came totally out of the blue!

Thanks!
-Chocamine
 
I've been seeing a few external HDs with faulty controller boards that power on but will not mount or will even be acknowledged through usb or firewire. After removing the drives from the external casing and installing into an external enclosure they work perfectly again. What type of external HD is it?

EDIT: Nevermind, I see you posted it as a WD drive. WDs are usually pretty decent. Post back with DiskWarrior results.
 
So you were able to use Disk Warrior even though your drive was unmounting? I'm having the same sort of problem and don't want to shell out the money for what's on the hard drive unless I know for sure it'll work. Good results?
 
With a drive that is acting sporadic or exhibiting signs of damage, there is nothing in the world that will guarantee you 100% success short of sending your drive to a data recovery company and paying through the nose for data recovery.

With that being said, many people report good success with DiskWarrior, but a drive that mounts and unmounts sporadically may be due to one of two things: damage to the software portion of the drive (headers, table of contents, directories, etc.), or damage to the hardware of the drive.

DiskWarrior can only fix the software side of things. No software in the world can fix hardware problems.
 
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