ok so here's my problem. i just took delivery on a brand new macbook pro with mountain lion os10.8.2, and plugged in my VERBATIM 500gb external hard drive, to the usb port. it has all my backup documents from my old macbook pro which has lion , os10.7.
like everyone else, things were working fine unti the computer went to sleep. upon waking, the hard drive had completely disappeared from the finder; i pulled it out, got the 'fail to safely eject...' error message, then got the more disturbing 'fail to repair the disk' error message. boom. there goes my all my backup documents.
i restarted a few times--sometimes with the external hard drive plugged in, sometimes with it unplugged-- repaired disk permissions, all to now avail.
i've seen on some of these posts advice to get firmware updates on the external hard drives, or to replace the hard drives, but really, apple? really??? is this hard drive shot? if so, then you owe me a new external hard drive.
in the meantime, must i plug it back in to my older, slower macbook pro and send this new one back for a full refund?? really, apple?