LaCie External Hard Drive not working properly...
I have a 250G lacie hard drive that I have had for about 3 years now. Recently it has started playing up.
Initally it sounded like the hard drive was just disconnecting, I would be working away and there would be a click and whirl noise, followed by the warning saying my hard drive had been unplugged properly. Then it would start making sounds like it was trying to connect again.
Now sometimes when I plug it in, nothing happens. I hear the whining of the drive starting....sometimes after a while, or after making the dropping sound and then the whirring sound it'll show up on the desk top after a while, other times it never does.
So initially when it wasn't showing up I would unplug it (causing th warning screen to pop up) so I've stopped that now. I have tried unplugging it at the wall, using different cables and using different ports, but still no change.
The thing that got me is that if I look in disk utility it'll show up in there. Is there any way of opening and accessing the disc from there? or is there a way of making it show up since it's in disk utility?
It's quite frustrating. I work with video and use the external drive to hold the video files. I have backed up the drive, but I'd like to continue using it? Or do these drives have a short shelf life? If so, might be time I made use of the Sales of Good Act!
I hope someone can help me with this,
Many thanks,
Martin.
G4 1.25GHz 15.2, Mac OS X (10.3.x), LaCie 250G HDD.