Time for a new external drive, or is this normal?
Hi everyone,
Is it normal for Time Machine partitions to crash and burn with some frequency, requiring first aid via Disk Utility, or is this a sign I've got a lemon of an external hard drive and need to buy a new one?
I've got a design-by-Porsche LaCie 500Gb external drive that I use for Time Machine. It's gotten bunged up twice in the last 4 months. When it's "failing," it tends to do things like not mount, spin forever, various error messages to system, etc. The first time, in October, I sent it back to LaCie, who claimed they couldn't find anything wrong with it, reformatted it, and returned it.
The second time was earlier this week. After about 4-5 repairs by Disk Utility over the course of probably 8 hours, with event store UUIDs not matching and deep traversals required, the thing seems to be back from the dead without any reformatting. Fingers crossed. But it was pretty touch and go there, with the Finder getting frozen up in early stages.
I don't find this too cool, but I'm not sure whether it's a hardware problem or just standard problems with Time Machine being finicky and ruining the file structure sometimes.
Do other folks have similar problems with Time Machine appearing to just frag their disks upon occasion? Or is it time to plunk down the pennies for a new drive? (And to try and let bygones be bygones with LaCie!)
Is it normal for Time Machine partitions to crash and burn with some frequency, requiring first aid via Disk Utility, or is this a sign I've got a lemon of an external hard drive and need to buy a new one?
I've got a design-by-Porsche LaCie 500Gb external drive that I use for Time Machine. It's gotten bunged up twice in the last 4 months. When it's "failing," it tends to do things like not mount, spin forever, various error messages to system, etc. The first time, in October, I sent it back to LaCie, who claimed they couldn't find anything wrong with it, reformatted it, and returned it.
The second time was earlier this week. After about 4-5 repairs by Disk Utility over the course of probably 8 hours, with event store UUIDs not matching and deep traversals required, the thing seems to be back from the dead without any reformatting. Fingers crossed. But it was pretty touch and go there, with the Finder getting frozen up in early stages.
I don't find this too cool, but I'm not sure whether it's a hardware problem or just standard problems with Time Machine being finicky and ruining the file structure sometimes.
Do other folks have similar problems with Time Machine appearing to just frag their disks upon occasion? Or is it time to plunk down the pennies for a new drive? (And to try and let bygones be bygones with LaCie!)
MacBook Pro Early 2008, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
