FireWire hard drive blues...

[macguy]

My question/problem perhaps does not belong here and if so just let me know and i can delete the posting.

I have a FireWire 1 TB hard drive about two years old.

It has OS 10.6.7. It has 50 per cent free space.

Recently, after booting into this FireWire drive i tried to install data from DVD's . The data on these DVD's use the installer application.

When the installer has about one minute remaining i note that the activity led light on the FireWire hard drive just stays on red and the installer never finishes and all is frozen. Force quit does do anything.

Then i have to turn off my iMac ( 3.06 GHz ) meanwhile the FireWire stays on and the activity led light on the FireWired drive stays on red.

Only when i turn off the power to the FireWire drive and unplug the FireWire from the computer can i get the drive to work.

I have repaired the directory with DiskWarrior 4.3 and also TechTool Pro 6. Also repaired permissions.

Suggestions/help/advice please.

 

[LCGuy]

Have you tried doing a surface scan? Could be bad sectors.

 

[macguy]

Thanks. Good hint. I have never done that before with any of my computers or external hard drives.

If there are bad sectors will TechToolPro repair them somehow ?

 

[LCGuy]

The only way to repair bad sectors is to replace the drive. Speaking of which, is the drive still under warranty by any chance?

 

[Bunsen]

Can't you reformat it to ignore the bad sectors?

 

[macguy]

I tried several extended TechToolPro jobs and the activity led light on the FireWire hard drive just stays on red with no further response unless i power off the drive.

It looks as though i will have to take the drive back for some warranty work or some kind of adjustment to replacement. I have bought a number of external firewire drives from him and this is the first time that a drive has failed.

Thanks to all for spending your time to provide me with some self help guidance and advice.

I will post the results of my claim for warranty.

 

[trag]

When I had similar problems it turned out that the enclosure bridge (firewire to IDE bridge) was faulty. Not necessarily the case for you, but that's my experience.

 

[macguy]

Guy that sold me the hard drive suggested erase/reformat/re-install OS 10.6.7.

However as suggested by Bunsen i forgot to ask how to reformat it to ignore the bad sectors. I could not readily see that choice in DiskUtility.

That seems to have solved the problem. So far so good.

Thanks again to all here at this forum.

 

[macguy]

Spoke to soon. That drive has gone cafluee again. It seems that when it has to do an extensive job such as copy to or from very large (1G+) files it freezes. So i have to power off that drive and then power on to clear the "red" LED light. Obviously time for a "new" drive.