macbook - instability due to ext hdd?

[SooTyLaDbanned]

hi everyone,

I was having an issue for a while that sometimes a program would hang, either spinning beachball or just be unresponsive... I assumed after a while that i just had too many apps on the system and it was time for a good ole format...

i did this and the problem still reared its head every now and then, i'll give an example of what would happen:

all apps running fine, then i'd load forklift (my ftp/file manager) and it would show the program active indicator under the doc icon, but nothing would happen, in activity monitor it would be red and unresponsive so i would kill the process (through all this force quit doesnt do anything).

this would happen with multiple apps but it started to occur to me that it was mainly (but not exclusively) apps that talk to the ext hdd all the time...

cut a long story short i always ended up having to do a cold reset (holding the power button for 4 seconds) cuz some apps just wouldn't close.

I have believed for many months that i just had some software installed (that i couldn't identify) that was messing with the integrity of the operating system...

what i have found though after doing some tests, is that whenever this happens, to fix it (100% success rate so far) that all i have to do is turn off my external drive (WD 500GB MyBook Studio Edition - connected through FireWire).

this kicks up the "you have removed the devices without ejecting..." dialog but the program instantly kicks back to life if it was hanging, or quits properly if it was in its unresposive half-quit state.

so, the probem as I see it is definately the external HDD... at the moment I have completely turned off Time Machine but the problem still persists, and the HDD is partitioned into 2 drives (dont know as that makes a difference).

So, could anyone shed any light on what is going on? I do like using Time Machine so would like to resolve this properly so i can leave the ext hdd on all the time without issue...

by the way i am on a 2.2gig MacBook with 4gig of RAM and the original 120gig HDD...

any ideas?

 

[Deleted member 651465]

You could just partition the hard drive as a whole, and trial Time Machine solely for a week? It's not the best solution, but if it work you'll know it's not that, and you can at least back up the system..

Perhaps (and this is a random-guess) that because the drive is split, it is having issues writing to both partitions (that ultimately depend on one another) when you have apps that rely on the external drive (especially if Time Machine is running a scheduled backup).

What I mean by that is.. Partition1 is sending data to the Mac, while Partition2 is trying to clone the data.. so one is dependant on the other, and they're operating on a single bus.

You can test this by manually performing a backup, and launching the apps that caused you problems before (forklift etc). If it crashes, you know it's not meant to be.. that said, I'm sure there are plenty of users who operate the same principles, so it could be a drive-specific issue; in which case scoure the Western Digital forums for related issues.

In short.. I don't know! ha!

 

[NickK]

Can test the hard drive (ie do a zero write format to check that the drive itself isn't fubarred?