HD acting strange

[sanrio]

Greetings,

My external HD just keeps disconnecting and will not allow me to access it unless I keep it off for awhile. I've tried running fsck, but the drive just removes itself.

$ fsck /dev/disk1s2
** /dev/rdisk1s2
BAD SUPER BLOCK: MAGIC NUMBER WRONG

LOOK FOR ALTERNATE SUPERBLOCKS? [yn] y


CANNOT READ: BLK 1044612672

The external enclosure is an Icy Dock, and the drive inside a Western Digital. I've had this problem before with a drive from LaCie, but that drive made a strange noise.. my current drive doesn't make any strange noises at all.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[shuuhen]

Welcome to TSF.

Have you tried the drive with another operating system and/or machine? What format(s) did you use on the drive?

Bad superblocks and bad magic numbers are a bad sign. Your drive may need reformatting or even replacing.

If you have the space and feel comfortable with the command line (I'd guess yes since you use fdisk) you could use dd to try and make an image of the hard drive. Let us know if you want to try that and need help with the command (it's been a while since I've used it, so I can't think of it immediately).

[sinclair_tm]

You could also try CarbonCloneCopier to make an image of the disk. But yes, it sounds like the hard drive is failing, and you need to back up any info you need off of it ASAP.