Mac External Drive weirdness or bad drive?

[nlinecomputers]

Ok, I do not normally handle Macs. But one of my clients has an iMac Retina 2017 that he really doesn't even use that he suddenly got a bug up his butt about using it and powered it up for the first time in months. It was still on High Sierra and he wanted it updated to whatever was the latest MacOS.

He tried to do it himself and couldn't figure out how. It kept prompting him to upgrade to Mojave which for unknown reasons would not work. He had an external drive attached to it but he said he read that upgrading would wipe out that drive(I don't know the source of that and I didn't push it.) so he ran to Best Buy and purchased a new WD EasyStore WDBAJN0020BBK-XA, its a 2TB spinner, which the Mac would not mount. He said it was formated for Mac but the specs I read says it's an NTFS formatted drive. But Windows would also not see the drive.

I attached it back to the mac and kept getting code 8 errors trying to mount it. I downloaded the Mac version of WD Diag which says the drive is OK. It had a erase function so I let it reformat it. After that, I was able to mount the drive and point Time Machine to it. Time Machine did its backup successfully so I upgraded the Mac to Big Sur. After the upgrade, his copy of Webroot complained that it was not compatible and needed to update. I updated it, let do the scan it was insisting it needed to do, and went to bed. This morning I find that Time Machine has errored out with a code 8. The drive can be mounted but running first aid results in a code 8. WD Diag is running on it now but I suspect that it will again come clean. So what is going on here? Is there anything known to mess up Time Machine? Webroot a problem? Or is it just a bad drive?

 

[captainnate]

That sounds like a drive with bad sectors to me. I would normally suggest running disk warrior on it to see if it is just some kind of corruption (disk warrior is usually good about recognizing that drives have bad sectors as well)... but the fact you were getting error 8 out of the box and then again after use points to the drive having bad sectors or similar.

 

[nlinecomputers]

That sounds like a drive with bad sectors to me. I would normally suggest running disk warrior on it to see if it is just some kind of corruption (disk warrior is usually good about recognizing that drives have bad sectors as well)... but the fact you were getting error 8 out of the box and then again after use points to the drive having bad sectors or similar.

That is how I am leaning as well. I hope he kept his BB receipt. I'm not buying a $100+ program for one Mac client. LOL

 

[Markverhyden]

powered it up for the first time in months.

Have you reset the PRAM and SMC? Did you set the date and time? If it was off that long the battery probably completely ran down and date and time would be reset to default since there is no CMOS battery.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Have you reset the PRAM and SMC? Did you set the date and time? If it was off that long the battery probably completely ran down and date and time would be reset to default since there is no CMOS battery.

Well it is a desktop iMac. It was never unplugged. Just not turned on. He didn't mention any thing about resetting time.. I have not done the Pram/SMC resets as that seems drastic. I think I have a bum external drive here.

The drive passed all WD Diag tests and I could mount it again after unplugging the drive. It seems to work fine until the mac screen shuts off. Any known issues with the external drive not liking a sleep mode? (I assume that when the screen is off the mac is going to go to sleep after the Time Machine Backup finishes)

 

[Markverhyden]

Well it is a desktop iMac. It was never unplugged. Just not turned on. He didn't mention any thing about resetting time.. I have not done the Pram/SMC resets as that seems drastic. I think I have a bum external drive here.

The drive passed all WD Diag tests and I could mount it again after unplugging the drive. It seems to work fine until the mac screen shuts off. Any known issues with the external drive not liking a sleep mode? (I assume that when the screen is off the mac is going to go to sleep after the Time Machine Backup finishes)

SMC reset is just unplugging the power on the iMac for 30 seconds

 

[Computer Bloke]

I have not done the Pram/SMC resets as that seems drastic

It's not drastic at all. In the Mac world it's the equivalent of turning the computer off and on again, and just like power-cycling PCs it solves a surprisingly wide range of problems disturbingly easily. It should be the first step in any Mac repair immediately after checking that the computer has power, because if you do clever stuff first and later fix the machine by resetting PRAM/SMC you'll end up kicking yourself.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Ok, we have confirmation that it is a bad drive. I asked the client for the original drive, I should have taken it, to begin with, and found that it was blank (end-user is PEBKAK) so I set it up as the time machine drive and it is writing to it just fine. I am getting a "not properly disconnected error" I assume because of some kind of power down? Is there a way to make sure the USB ports on the back of the machine stay powered when the screen is off? Or should I advise him to get a powered hub?

 

[Markverhyden]

Is there a way to make sure the USB ports on the back of the machine stay powered when the screen is off? Or should I advise him to get a powered hub?

In theory the USB ports won't go offline as long as it's being used. And time machine should wake them up. But we all know standby/energy saver/ etc is far from perfect. So I'll turn off standby where possible. System Preferences>Energy Saver>unlock in lower left>make sure prevent computer from sleeping when screen is off is checked off.

 

[brandonkick]

A lot of times, it's a simple case of the current mac OS X install that had a program installed to allow the machine to read and write to NTFS drives. When the OS is restored or upgraded, that ability goes away (until whatever that utility is installed again) and they "feel like" the drive is no longer writable (though they should still be able to read from it).

I ran into this personally recently with a friend of mine. Hard drives that "worked fine" until they restored their mac. When I asked why, it was for performance issues. They reinstalled the OS thinking it would fix everything. Drives would read, but no longer write. Turned out to be NTFS formatted. The only way they ever "worked" before was some third party utility was installed.