WD external hard drive seems to crash my Mac just by being connected to it
Is this even possible?
I apologize in advance if the question is too obviously n00b, or if it's been answered (I did search before posting), or if it's in the wrong forum.
I have a brand-new MBP, late 2008, and I was going to use a WD Elements 1.5 TB external drive for backup (Time Machine) and cloning (CCC). After about a month of use, my MBP started developing strange symptoms like some discussed elsewhere on these forums (apps apparently launching but invisible in the Finder, Finder unable to launch, Disk Utility saying my MBP's drive was failing, WD drive randomly disconnecting itself, and much more) and essentially became unusable. Three different Apple Geniuses were unable to help me. The third one was the most helpful and understanding and sent my MBP off to be repaired. I got it back with the message that they couldn't find anything wrong with it either.
They did a clean install of 10.6.2 and I created a new user account. Everything went fine until I tried to migrate some of my files only (no apps) from the WD drive. Then my clean new MBP began exhibiting the same symptoms as before.
So I did another clean install and created another new user account and didn't touch the WD drive. Everything has been running well for about a week now.
To test if the WD drive itself was the problem, I connected it to my family eMac this morning. The eMac (which admittedly isn't all that fast to begin with, of course) immediately began running slower and the WD drive began to randomly eject itself. I disconnected the drive and am sending it back to WD.
I'm just happy to have my MBP up and running again, though the loss of all my backed-up data is hard to take. I have two questions for the group, if you don't mind:
(1) Is it possible that the WD drive caused all these problems on my poor Macs? I'm going to assume that it is, but I'm curious and would like to understand (briefly) how.
(2) Is it safe to open and use any of the files I recovered from that drive, or should I just trash them to be on the safe side? I feel extremely snake-bit.
Thank you in advance for reading this, and for responding if you care to!
I apologize in advance if the question is too obviously n00b, or if it's been answered (I did search before posting), or if it's in the wrong forum.
I have a brand-new MBP, late 2008, and I was going to use a WD Elements 1.5 TB external drive for backup (Time Machine) and cloning (CCC). After about a month of use, my MBP started developing strange symptoms like some discussed elsewhere on these forums (apps apparently launching but invisible in the Finder, Finder unable to launch, Disk Utility saying my MBP's drive was failing, WD drive randomly disconnecting itself, and much more) and essentially became unusable. Three different Apple Geniuses were unable to help me. The third one was the most helpful and understanding and sent my MBP off to be repaired. I got it back with the message that they couldn't find anything wrong with it either.
They did a clean install of 10.6.2 and I created a new user account. Everything went fine until I tried to migrate some of my files only (no apps) from the WD drive. Then my clean new MBP began exhibiting the same symptoms as before.
So I did another clean install and created another new user account and didn't touch the WD drive. Everything has been running well for about a week now.
To test if the WD drive itself was the problem, I connected it to my family eMac this morning. The eMac (which admittedly isn't all that fast to begin with, of course) immediately began running slower and the WD drive began to randomly eject itself. I disconnected the drive and am sending it back to WD.
I'm just happy to have my MBP up and running again, though the loss of all my backed-up data is hard to take. I have two questions for the group, if you don't mind:
(1) Is it possible that the WD drive caused all these problems on my poor Macs? I'm going to assume that it is, but I'm curious and would like to understand (briefly) how.
(2) Is it safe to open and use any of the files I recovered from that drive, or should I just trash them to be on the safe side? I feel extremely snake-bit.
Thank you in advance for reading this, and for responding if you care to!
MacBook Pro 13", Mac OS X (10.6.2), eMac (USB 2.0)
