Mountain Lion destroys 3 external hard drives any reason why?

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Level 1

8 points

Mountain Lion destroys 3 external hard drives any reason why?

New Mac Book Pro Retina, Mountain Lion OS a all updates. Each external USB hardrive including the main back up 3TB external

blows apart with a message you can no longer read or write to this drive, the exteranl, back it up immediately. Go to do that

it rebooted and now that drive as well as 2 others are not accessible.

I have put 2 of the externals on my older Mac Book and I can get them to mount, and had to buy a new 4TB exteranal for

backing up the older externals. I don't dare put that new one on the Mountian Lion new Mac Book Pro

as I already lost years of work on the 3TB drive that will not mount at all. Something is terribly wrong

with this box or the OS Anyone have any guidance? I dread having all my externals and I have many that hold scads of my

work, etc. The 3T may not be repairable as I can't get it to be seen by any other G5Duo or Mac Books 2 different ones

all run on Snow lepoard

Help?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, iOS 6.1.2, Destroys external drives

Posted on Mar 1, 2013 2:49 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

TheSmokeMonster

Level 4

3,246 points

Mar 1, 2013 3:02 AM in response to echo0622

You shouldn't try to install ML on a hdd or ssd with information on it already, that you are planning on keeping.

Installing ML will reformat, repartition and erase any hard drive you do that to.

are you trying to boot externally from one of these?

if so, make sure it is one without any information on it to be completely safe. and always back up your files to something you're not going to be doing this stuff to.

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Answer 2

echo0622 Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 1, 2013 3:12 AM in response to TheSmokeMonster

This is a brand new out of the box. With Mountain Lion on it already and it has been update to the current

and latest verison. I was horrorifed as it worked for a while then, sent the SOL message to immediately back up

and to what? As it destroyed that one and 2 others trying to do that.

So I have contacted support but it is crazy. Perhaps it is like the message back on Lepoard or Snow Leopard on my old laptop Mac Book where if I didn;t want to keep iCloud it said I would if I turned it off erase

my hard drive. Backed up and shut it down, turned off iCloud wondering if that is the issue?

Or is Apple saying anything as Im ready to return it. No way to back up anything new or with data

it still happens. Any help or insights are and will be greatly appreicated.

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Answer 3

echo0622 Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 1, 2013 3:17 AM in response to echo0622

Just a forgotten response. no Im not trying to boot from any of these hard drive externals.

And just to store data images and files. Archiving etc.

There is no way to trust even a blank one to it as it eventually does the same thing.

Thank you fo ryour quick replly

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Answer 4

Mar 1, 2013 3:24 AM in response to echo0622

you don't need to install ML on these hard drives then, just plug them in as normal. They should appear on your desktop or in your sidebar in finder depending on your settings.

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Answer 5

Mar 1, 2013 4:10 AM in response to echo0622

As far as the older drives go, all may not be lost.

It is possible that the USB interface in the box may

be somehow hosed and the drive itself may be fine.

You could pull the old drive out of the case and use

one of the many USB->SATA adapters and hook up to

the another computer. This would at least tell you if

you have lost all your data. Make sure you get one

with external powering like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002

Or if somehow the drive is corrupted, at least try to use

some recovery software to get te data back. If the drive

is good, you can put it in another case. If you have that

much at stake, you have nothing to lose but a few bucks

(price of a good meal soewhere) by trying this.

BTW, what brand are these HDDs? Mountain Lion in and

of itself should not be causing the drives to be unreadable.

There may be a serious hardware issue with the MBP.

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Answer 6

Mar 1, 2013 4:53 AM in response to echo0622

My mistake, I totally read this wrong, 😝

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