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User profile for user: Raltham
Raltham Author
User level: Level 1
10 points

I have an external hard drive which keeps unmounting itself. How do I stop this.

It is a WD "My Passport". It is brand new. I plug it in and it mounts straight away.

I connect it to the Time MAchine and it starts copying OK and then after a few minutes, for no apperent reason it shuts down.

I have taken the drive into the PC World shop and they treid it on their Mac (similar model to mine) and after 20 minutes steady copying of the data, they showed it worked fine. It seems as if there is a switch which turns it off in software but I have no idea where to find it. Any help appreciated.

iMac, iOS 5, 27" iMac

Posted on Aug 22, 2012 10:23 AM

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20 replies
User profile for user: ccvargas
ccvargas
User level: Level 1
5 points

Sep 25, 2012 8:53 AM in response to Raltham

I have exactly the same problem. I contacted WD Support and they told me to test it on another Apple computer(laptop OS X 10.6.5). I did, and got the the unmounting error. I have (3) 3TB HDD connected to my maxxed out IMAC. Only one of the three is giving trouble. After almost a year of use it is giving trouble of dismounting after 10mins or so. The light stays on. The other HDDs are fine. I am running (OS X10.7.5) I have not checked other utilities such as sleeping times etc for the hard drive. I'll try this.

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I have an external hard drive which keeps unmounting itself. How do I stop this.

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