External Drives Suddenly Empty

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Level 1

5 points

External Drives Suddenly Empty

Yesterday, a Caldigit 3TB external drive decided that it no longer had my 69,000-track iTunes library on it, anymore (along with other files, too). It reports as being empty. It is formatted "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". It was USB-connected at the time, & was fine, the day before.

Back in April, the same thing happened simultaneously to 3 Western Digital 1TB drives (all connected by firewire), which were also formatted the same. Before anyone mentions 'Backup".....one of those WAS the backup!!

I tried talking to Apple specialists in a store, & by live chat, & they are not very helpful at all.....maybe because the iMac is a 2007 24", running 10.11.6 El Capitan. They seem to lose interest if it is more than 5 minutes old...!

Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening, & what I can do to get that library back?

Many thanks,

Woody.

iMac (24-inch Mid 2007), OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Jul 24, 2017 10:32 AM

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Answer 1

woody44 Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 5, 2017 10:20 AM in response to woody44

Well, it seems that no-one could offer any help......& looking around the internet, these things happen with OSX & external drives, apparently.

Data Rescue 3 managed to find the deleted iTunes files, so I managed to get those back.

I must admit, though, that this deletion event (& the one that preceded it) has soured my enthusiasm for apple products, somewhat.

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Answer 2

woody44 Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 6, 2017 1:57 AM in response to Eric Root

Hello Eric.

The drive seems to now be working fine, yes. However, so did all 3 WD ones, previously.

All I need to do now, is search through millions of recovered files from all of the wiped drives & restore all my family photo & home movie history, along with all the other important stuff that disappeared!! That'll take ages, & that's assuming that I manage to find it all.

I'm just hoping that this doesn't happen again.

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Answer 3

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,440 points

Aug 6, 2017 8:45 AM in response to woody44

Launchpad : Other : Console : All. Search for: Error.

During the timeframe that your external drive went empty, what do your console logs show as potential errors? The log entries are more current at the bottom of the view.

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Answer 4

kahjot

Level 4

2,463 points

Aug 6, 2017 10:09 AM in response to woody44

That is a scary event.

I don't believe that all versions of OS X are prone to causing data loss from external drives. I do think that some external drives are more reliable than others. I will not use external drives from Seagate or WD. I would expect the CalDigit drive to be better, at least in terms of the enclosure. But what drive is in there? Some 3 TB Seagate drives had a high failure rate. I'd suggest getting Smart Utility to check the health of the drive before trusting it with your iTunes library again. And you need to regularly back up this drive.

I'd also suggest getting a decent enclosure from OWC (macsales.com) and choosing the drive you want to install. I've been using HGST, Toshiba, and one or two WD Black series, usually in OWC enclosures.

The only drives that have gone belly up in my systems were several Seagate external drives that we had because we got them for nothing. A couple of the enclosures died rather than the drives. One just failed two days ago without any warning signs and nothing could be recovered. The drives that I bought and installed in (mostly) OWC enclosures have been working well, some of them for 4 or 5 years.

Recent versions of OS X do seem flakier about working with externals, particularly in regard to system sleep. I find it hard to understand why these issues have not been fixed. Do you generally allow the iMac to sleep rather than shut it down? If you do, do you ever get "improper disk ejection" warnings when waking the system from sleep?

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Answer 5

woody44 Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 8, 2017 2:10 PM in response to Eric Root

Thank You, all, for your replies.

I'll try to explain it all, & answer your questions in doing so:

I purchased the WD drives a few years ago, as they were connectable by firewire. They were used for ages, with no problems.

The Caldigit was added later, as it was a firewire connection, too, specifically for the huge iTunes collection. It does not start up when the mac is turned on, like the WD ones do. Originally, all 4 were daisy-chained.

This arrangement was fine, until May, this year. Upon start-up one day, the 3 WD drives came up as "My Book", & not as their volume names that I had assigned. They also all reported as empty, no matter what I used to explore them. The Caldigit was fine, as I had not turned it on!! I immediately disconnected it, & didn't plug it back in, for ages. In the meantime, I tried to recover as much deleted stuff from the WD drives, as I could. I connected them with a USB cable to do this.....I still have millions of files to go through!

After this, I re-connected the Caldigit via USB, & all was fine with that until the day before my original posting, above, in July. Upon start-up, that day, it came up as "My Book" (weird, I know....it didn't when it was brand-new), & also reported as empty. Gutted!!

So, as things stand, I have my iTunes collection back (thanks to Data Rescue 3), & it is now on a new usb 8GB Seagate drive. I don't have the available funds for the expensive stuff that you kindly provided the links to, sadly. Thank you, anyway. I am now using the 3 original WD drives with firewire, & the rest with a USB hub.

I've looked at the console logs, but can't find anything for that date, using the 'error' filter.

I never use the sleep function. All drives (except the Caldigit) turn on & off with the mac, usually flawlessly!! The Caldigit is always (& I mean always), ejected correctly before turning it off.

Hope this explains it all.

Cheers,

Woody.

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