Como Paulie

Q: Have I Ruined My New External Drive…?

Hello,

 

Apologies if tis is in the wrong place. I recently acquired a Glyph Studio 2TB external drive in order to back up my 27" iMac, quadcore Intel, running Lion. I'm using Firewire 800 as my connection. I ran Time Machine to perform the backup, but the indexing seemed to be taking forever (many days) and I decided to stop the backup. I started again and the same thing happened, so after searching around on the net I learned that many people running Lion had a similar problem, but that some of them saw an improvement if they reformatted the external drive.

 

So I opened Disk Utility so that I could erase what was on the external drive. I followed the directions of both Apple and Glyph (they are all but identical) about erasing, but for some reason I also included the option of erasing the free space on the drive (I picked the simple option). This was taking a while, so I left it to do its business while I went to work. I came home this afternoon to see that the Mac has frozen in screen saver and nothing will budge. No matter how many times I click the mouse or keyboard I can't get it to snap to life. So I decided to turn off the external drive, disconnect it and power down the Mac and restart. Now I can't get any action out of the drive at all. If I have Disk Utility open and plug in the external drive I can see it in the left pane, but clicking on it results in a perpetually spinning beach ball of death.


My understanding is that erasing the free space fills the space with 1s and 0s. Have I inadvertently and completely filled my external drive with useless information to the point where it cannot be accessed? I though that I was reformatting it  - what would be the point in a feature that would render hardware useless (if that is what has happened)? I have tried looking all over the net for an answer to this but I haven't found anyone with my specific problem.Have i just ruined my new drive?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Mar 8, 2015 1:34 AM

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Q: Have I Ruined My New External Drive…?

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  • by BobHarris,

    BobHarris BobHarris Mar 8, 2015 9:06 AM in response to Como Paulie
    Level 6 (19,457 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 8, 2015 9:06 AM in response to Como Paulie

    The Mac did not intentionally ruin your disk.  However, a mechanical disk has moving parts and those parts can wear out.

     

    Erasing free space is not the same as erasing the disk.

     

    Erasing the disk has several options.  A simple write of zeros (1 pass) and a 7-pass secure erase (not sure if they still have the 35-pass version any more)

    <OS X: About Disk Utility's erase free space feature - Apple Support>

    The 7-pass secure erase can put a strain on a mechanical disk as there is a lot of disk head movement involved, and the high disk activity can generate a lot of heat, and electronics and heat do not get along.

     

    The Erase Free Space, is ONLY done on a mounted already formatted disk.  Disk Utility creates a file and starts writing data to the file.  As the file grows, it consumes free disk space. Disk Utility will continue to write to the file until ALL the free space on the disk has been consumed by the single, by now, very huge file.  Then Disk Utility will delete the file and all that space will become free space with nothing but junk inside

    <OS X: About Disk Utility's erase free space feature - Apple Support>

     

    If you really ONLY did a Erase Free Space, AND you do not have anything on the disk, you should be able to just do a simple Disk Utility erase and put an HFS+ file system on it, and forget about Erase Free Space.  If you do want to zero out the disk, the use the Erase... to the far right of the Erase Free Space button, and do a single pass of zeros.  That is sufficient, unless you are trying to keep your old data from very powerful government entities (and if that is the case, it would be better to melt the disk to insure the data was destroyed, otherwise, a simple single pass of zeros is all you need).

  • by Como Paulie,

    Como Paulie Como Paulie Mar 8, 2015 6:09 PM in response to BobHarris
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 8, 2015 6:09 PM in response to BobHarris

    Hi Bob,

     

    thanks for your time and information (a lot of that I have checked out previously).

     

    The drive is actually brand new - a Glyph Studio which is pre-formatted for Mac. I definitely did not use the 7 pass secure thing - I used the simplest option. I still don't know why I even included this step (aside from my own stupidity) because the drive had hardly anything on it and I certainly had nothing to hide. I just wanted to erase what I had started with my backups and start again.

     

    My problem is that now when I launch Disk Utility and plug in the drive, I can see it listed on the left, but when I click on it I just get the spinning beach ball. Do you think that perhaps me having to switch off the drive (as described in my OP) when the screen froze may have had something to do with this? I would love to try your last suggestion, but at this stage the drive simply will not connect properly (perpetual beach ball).

  • by petermac87,

    petermac87 petermac87 Mar 8, 2015 6:15 PM in response to Como Paulie
    Level 5 (7,402 points)
    Mar 8, 2015 6:15 PM in response to Como Paulie

    Can you reboot the Mac holding down Command + R and then use DiskUtility from there to reformat the external drive?

     

    Pete

  • by Como Paulie,

    Como Paulie Como Paulie Mar 8, 2015 10:26 PM in response to petermac87
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 8, 2015 10:26 PM in response to petermac87

    Hi Pete, thanks and I will give that a try.

     

    This morning I did try again (same result - beach ball) and have left the Mac to sit while I have gone to work in the hopes that by the time I get home some sort of progress may have happened. But when I get home, if it is still stuck I will do as you have suggested and report back.

  • by Como Paulie,

    Como Paulie Como Paulie Mar 9, 2015 9:56 PM in response to Como Paulie
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 9, 2015 9:56 PM in response to Como Paulie

    Latest progress - got home after leaving the computer and drive to sort each other out. No joy.

     

    Tried Command + R to reboot - no action.

     

    My next step is that tomorrow I will try hooking the drive up to my friend's iMac just to see what happens. Maybe it's the drive, maybe it's my Mac.

  • by Como Paulie,

    Como Paulie Como Paulie Mar 12, 2015 8:01 PM in response to Como Paulie
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 12, 2015 8:01 PM in response to Como Paulie

    I tried out the drive with my friend's Mac, and exactly the same thing has happened. Looks like some sort of problem with the drive.

     

    Thanks to everyone who responded.