WD MyBook or My Book unmounting randomly
I work for a Mac Support company in NYC, where we setup/teach/troubleshoot for homes or small businesses all over the city. However, I'm stumped by some recent issues with the WD 1TB My Book drives we've been purchasing for clients. In the past, WD has always been a reliable brand, so I'm wondering if anyone else is having these problems, or if someone thinks it might be Leopard related.
Running Leopard on all machines, recently 2 or 3 of the My Book 1TB drives have started unmounting randomly. But of course since Time Machine is supposed to be a "set it and forget it" solution, the client doesn't notice this until we get there (which is about once every couple weeks), and at that point they may have lost a week or more of backups (not a huge deal, but they're still not getting the full convenience and functionality of Time Machine). The drive, however, seems to be "on", and running, though not mounted (and does not show up in Disk Utility). So, to fix this, we simply turn it off and on again, and it shows up fine. Sometimes we have to do more than that, like disconnect it, turn it off, reconnect it, etc. I've had this happen on different machines, all running Leopard, but all with the WD My Book 1TB drive (though different My Book drives). Most of these drives are connected using Firewire 800, but some are using 400.
Unfortunately, after recommending these drives to numerous clients, I've since had to return 2 of them because 1 of them mounted sporadically and for the most part, not at all, and also was very hard to get to stay powered up, and the other one wouldn't turn on at all (lemon, bad power button). Had I had these problems from the outset, I may have recommended other drives. However, now, I'm hoping against hope that it's just Leopard, and not just horribly made drives! Unfortunately, I don't have a Tiger machine at most of the client homes to test it out on.
HOPEFULLY this is not a problem with the drives, which I have read only good reviews about, but rather is a problem with Leopard, which I assume will be updated in January (10.5.2) with some sort of fix. However, any advice or suggestions others have would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Ryan
Running Leopard on all machines, recently 2 or 3 of the My Book 1TB drives have started unmounting randomly. But of course since Time Machine is supposed to be a "set it and forget it" solution, the client doesn't notice this until we get there (which is about once every couple weeks), and at that point they may have lost a week or more of backups (not a huge deal, but they're still not getting the full convenience and functionality of Time Machine). The drive, however, seems to be "on", and running, though not mounted (and does not show up in Disk Utility). So, to fix this, we simply turn it off and on again, and it shows up fine. Sometimes we have to do more than that, like disconnect it, turn it off, reconnect it, etc. I've had this happen on different machines, all running Leopard, but all with the WD My Book 1TB drive (though different My Book drives). Most of these drives are connected using Firewire 800, but some are using 400.
Unfortunately, after recommending these drives to numerous clients, I've since had to return 2 of them because 1 of them mounted sporadically and for the most part, not at all, and also was very hard to get to stay powered up, and the other one wouldn't turn on at all (lemon, bad power button). Had I had these problems from the outset, I may have recommended other drives. However, now, I'm hoping against hope that it's just Leopard, and not just horribly made drives! Unfortunately, I don't have a Tiger machine at most of the client homes to test it out on.
HOPEFULLY this is not a problem with the drives, which I have read only good reviews about, but rather is a problem with Leopard, which I assume will be updated in January (10.5.2) with some sort of fix. However, any advice or suggestions others have would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Ryan
Mac OS X (10.5.1)
