USB Hard drive drops out

Freakitchen · 29 Sep 2011 at 11:13

Hi guys,

Have been having an on-going problem with an external hard drive. The drive is an internal WD hard drive that I have installed in an Akasa USB caddy. Long story short, the drive kept force-ejecting from the OS, a problem which I had put down to the caddy being faulty. I returned the caddy, they sent it me back, the problem still occurs.

In an attempt to prove that the caddy is at fault, today I connected the drive to another enclosure. It just dropped out (though it always reappears). Does this mean it's a fault with the drive? Is there anything I can do to verify this within Mac OS?

Cheers all.

cotton31 · 29 Sep 2011 at 12:28

Hi mate,

I had the same problem with a Drobo connected via USB where it kept dropping connection. I read somewhere that it was a problem with USB drivers in one of the Snow Leopard updates. I'll try and find the link.

//edit: here it is.

What version of OS X are you running?

I've changed to a FireWire connection since on the Drobo with no drop outs, so not sure if it's been fixed in a later release of SL/Lion.

Freakitchen · 29 Sep 2011 at 15:36

Thanks for that. It's a strange one but it happened both on Snow Leopard, began to behave itself for a while, and now is doing the same again on Lion.

I've plugged the same drive into a new caddy, and connected it to a different Mac - still does the same thing. On this basis I can only assume that the drive is somehow faulty, but I don't know if there's any way to confirm that within OS X?

What's frustrating is that I had the drive running perfectly for a year as an internal drive in a Windows computer! And I'm unable to test the drive in anything other than OS X now as it's Mac formatted!

Alasdairhurst · 29 Sep 2011 at 16:50

is it getting enough power?

theheyes · 29 Sep 2011 at 20:11

Are you using the same USB cable each time?

Freakitchen · 30 Sep 2011 at 08:21

Alasdairhurst said:
is it getting enough power?

I think so. When I sent the Akasa enclosure back for repair, they told me the power pack was faulty and had been replaced. The problem still occurs and did so in a different caddy / different power pack.

theheyes said:
Are you using the same USB cable each time?

No, have tried a few different ones now. Struggling to work this one out!

theheyes · 1 Oct 2011 at 10:43

Have you tried any of the WD diagnostic tools? I've had two WD drives die on me in the last 6 months so it wouldn't surprise me if the disk was at fault. One completely gave up without warning. I wouldn't trust that disk.

Freakitchen · 7 Oct 2011 at 22:48

Okay, more weirdness! I managed to work out that the Akasa caddy was faulty, or at least incompatible with the Mac, because it continued to drop out on my Mac at work, with a different hard drive installed in it.

In an attempt to get my 2TB drive working again, I bought another (different) caddy for the drive. Since this afternoon, this combination has killed Finder on 2 different Macs! The drive works fine and then subsequently crashes Finder; when I try to force relaunch it refuses to happen until I switch off the drive, then Finder immediately comes back!

What's going on here guys?!? I should mention that the drive works fine with a 'StarTech' USB docking station, which only serves to confuse me even more.