I unplugged both the power cord and the interface cord and let it sit all night so it could think it over. This morning, I plugged them both in again, and the icon showed up on “disc utility.” So I ran the repair function, and now the external drive is working again.
Just as I thought everything was normal, it kicked out again. As before, the drive is constantly running, and it doesn’t show up anywhere on the computer. Just before this happened, a message came up warning me that the device was shut down improperly. I’ve disconnected both cables and after waiting a bit, will try reconnecting again.
Every time that I think i have the external hard drive working again, I get a message that it wasn’t properly shut down before being disconnected, then it loses all access to the computer. The icon is gone from the desktop, and it doesn’t show up on disc utility.
The only way that I can get it operating again is to unplug it, but then it only works for a day before I get the improper disc connect message and it disappears again.