My 4 TB Gdrive’s light is constantly flashing, and I can hear the drive spinning as if it is doing something intensive. I am using a new iMac OX 10.12 and have the Gdrive formatted in 4 1TB partitions. The drive seems to be working fine other than the constant running/flashing. It is connected with USB 3. Has anyone experienced this and is there a way to stop it? Thanks.
It is likely due to background indexing of the drive or Time Machine backups if you set up one of the partitions to be a backup volume.
Thank you!
Came here to post the same thing.
I have had my 4TB USB 3 G-Drive for a few weeks now. It’s been great – stable, fast, quiet. But this “G” light on the front is constantly flashing/blinking. If it is mounted, it is blinking. There’s been no time when it is mounted and the light is not flashing… I am well past any indexing or disk-intensive tasks associated with a new drive, and have no idea what is causing it.
I have iStat Menus running which doesn’t show any activity on the drive (no read/writes). It only shows that the main SSD in my iMac is being accessed. On the G-drive, however, I can certainly feel the drive vibrating and random “chunk chunk” sounds even when nothing appears to be being read/written to the drive.
Any ideas? Is it normal for this to be constantly flashing?
You could try copying data to the drive, then deleting it. You can also try using Disk Utility to run a First Aid scan on it to clear up any possible corruptions but generally it will just blink during activity.
If you have the data elsewhere you can do an Erase on the drive using Disk Utility and start it over from scratch and see if that causes the light to stop once its empty.
Anne,
Barry Here. I just started having the exact same problem, with the same drive. I just posted it. Did you ever discover what the problem was?
Barry
The drive just stopped working. No more flashing and it doesn’t show up. I am using it as a kleenex box stand:-) Definitely make sure yours is backed up!
That’s worrying Anna! I’ve just bought two 4TB G Drive Mobiles, one behaves normally but the other does exactly what yours does/did. I’ve tried all the tests and fixes mentioned in this thread but it’s still the same. Are there any updates on this please? Using Mac OS 10.13.6
FIXED THE BLINKING LIGHTS! I’ve had this same problem for years & have been checking this post every few months for a solution. Most of you won’t like my solution, though. My 2x 3T USB 3.0 drives (formatted NTFS) are connected to my Windows 7 workstation. After increasing crashes (not related to the G Drives) I reinstalled Windows. Once I flipped on the G-Drives, they loaded up fine & when they weren’t actively being used for their media, the lights simply stayed on. And they also go dark & spin down with my computer’s sleep & off modes. I cannot say if this is an updated driver, bios, or OS software issue but they’re not blinking any longer. Indexing is off as before, and one of the G Drives is still plugged directly into the wall while another is still plugged into a huge common power strip shared by peripherals on an extension cord. So that wasn’t it. I also have 4 G-Drives of different sizes on a MacPro with Time Machine but they’ve been fine. Re-install the OS!
G Drive USB 10 TB
Windows 10
I have this issue on Windows. But the thing is, I just bought this drive. Right out of the box. I plugged it in and it started flashing.
No utilities show up when I plug it in. Utilities I installed to either recognize it (in Windows) or format it (for Windows) hang, don’t work or can’t find it.
All attempts to recognize it or format it don’t work because the system can’t see it. Disk Management hangs if I try to open it. The computer hangs during start up if it is plugged in.
It does show up in device manager though.
Did I get a lemon?
In your situation since it is causing so many direct issues with your system it might be faulty. I would suggest returning it to the place of purchase.
Normally it won’t show on Windows out of the box except for a small utility partition we have added to some of the newer drives. Other than that you would need to go through our process of removing the Mac format we place on all the drives and initialize it for Windows. How to format a G-Drive for Windows
“How to format a G drive for windows” failing is how I got here in the first place.
Drive returned.
Won’t ever buy one of your products again. If you can’t ensure I can buy a product off the shelf and have it work when I get home… I mean brand new out of the box. Never been opened.
Can’t say I have ever had this happen with a drive.
First time for everything.
Hello everyone,
I have a G drive that has been working great. Originally I had it connect firewire to my macbook air. I got a newer macbook pro and that was not an option. I got an adapter to “C” and hooked t up and again no problem. Finally a used the second port on the back to hook it up USB and when I try to do that into a USB hub ( the only option since Macbook Pro has no usb ) I then got the constant blinking light. But could still use it like before. When I reset it to the original way it was once again fine with no blinking light.
ALL that to say I suspect it is a USB not supplying enough power issue. I really wanted it to work with my usb hub. So it might be time to buy an updated one ( this one is quite a few years old ) I have another drive running through the hub and it seems to work fine
I bought a G Drive two days ago and had the constant blinking issue immediately after every restart. It would blink for hours. I zeroed out the hard drive and that appears to have fixed the problem.
