External Hard drive not booting up

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Level 1

8 points

External Hard drive not booting up

Hi all,

I have a Lacie 1TB Neil Poulton external hard drive mounted to my iMac that is running Mountain Lion but have been experiancing some issues with the HD lately.

The issue:

When my HD winds down after being inactive and I start using it again it doesn't wind back up and I'm unable to access or save any files. This leaves me having to force eject it and reboot it to get it working again.

I just wondered if it could be a Mountain Lion issue as I only started getting this issue shortly after upgrading my machine? Either that or the HD is knackered.

Any ideas on why this could be or what I can do,

I've tried searching around for the answer but couldn't find anything, if anyone could help me out it would be greatly appreciated.

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

Posted on Sep 20, 2013 6:02 AM

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Answer 1

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,594 points

Sep 20, 2013 6:10 AM in response to JET01

The EHD may be failing, however I'd recommed first starting trouble shooting the connection, make sure it's is physically connected and once that is confirmed and the problem persists try another cable. Then from the Recovery Partition run Disk Utiltiy and check the EHD.

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Answer 2

JET01 Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 20, 2013 6:20 AM in response to rkaufmann87

Thanks, I'll give both of those a try.

Some extra important info I've just remembered worth mentioning is I have two of the same EHD plugged into a USB hub that is then running into the back of my machine. One EHD is only on once a week to back up the other.

I thought it was my old USB hub at fault so I replaced it to no luck but maybe I need to review my set up. I think I'll also try plugging the troublesome EHD directly into the machine and see if it still happens.

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Answer 3

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,594 points

Sep 20, 2013 6:25 AM in response to JET01

Take a hub out of the equation all together to test the EHD, in other words connect the EHD directly to the iMac. Hubs can be problems too, another thing to try is a simple SMC and PRAM resets, do each of these at least 2x. If you are not familiar with how to do these resets, instructions are in Intel iMac SMC and PRAM resets

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