I recently received the message that the hard drive in bay “A” went bad on my My Studio II (hooked up to Mac running OS 10.6). I ordered a new 1TB drive and replaced it. The LED lights indicated that the RAID 1 was being rebult (LED’s running up the enclosure). The following day, I plugged it back into my Mac and it shows that the drive in bay “A”, the one I just replaced, is bad. It just says “Failed” on the Drive Manager, and does not show any other information about the drive.
My limited techinical knowledge would point me to believe that one of four things is going on.
The new hard drive is bad. Would it have even attempted to rebuild the RAID if it was?
The Enclosure is bad. Again, would it have rebuilt the RAID if the enclosure had issues?
I didn’t install the drive correctly. This was my first replacement drive on this, so this is definately a possiblity
Bad software incorrectly identifying the drive as bad. I also looked at the drive in Disk Utility in OSX, and it also stated that there was only 1TB, not the 2TB there should be.
Does anyone have any help to guide me to try to figure this out? I searched a bit for similar problems, but came up with none.
I don’t know about Mac or your exact problem. There seems to be more problems with the people that constantly unplug and plug a drive back in. It could be something corrupted. Is there any type drive check for errors on a Mac? Is there a WD drive/diagnostic utility for download that is compatible for you?
Thanks for the info. I have an update, which is making things a bit more suspect. (This might be a bit long).
After the WD Drive Manager identified the newly purchased drive (A 1TB Caviar Green 64MB Cache) as missing/faulty, I swapped the two drives to see if there was an issue with the enclosure. Nope. The new drive (now in Bay “B”) was still showing faulty, with the good drive (now in Bay “A”) still showing good.
So I assumed it was a bad hard drive. Returned it, got a new one, and went through the initial process again. I dropped in the new hard drive, plugged in the power, allowed it to rebuild the RAID 1 (LED lights indicating that it’s working correctly), and then plugged it into my mac via Firewire. The moment I plugged it in, the alternating flashing LED lights started and the WD Drive Manager identified the same issue. The new drive is missing/faulty.
Now I can’t imagine two drives being both bad immediately upon receving. What am I doing wrong?
Does cache size matter? The old working drive is 32MB cache. I assumed that cache doesn’t matter, but can someone confirm?
If that’s not the issue, what is going on? To me, it almost feels like the software isn’t restored or something and it’s immediately identifying the disk as bad.
So far, I’ve been very happy, but this is frustrating.
I got problems also with My Book Studio Ed II 1TB (2x500 Gb Raid 0). Drive is not in Finder but Mac’s Disk Utility shows disk B and disk A is missing. WD Drive Manager says there is a problem in WD My Book. I took off both A and B drives from the My Book case. I tested those in external USB Dock. Disk Utility found drive B but not A. Drives are similar physically so I moved connection circuit card (HD bottom, 4 screws) from B to A. The external USB Dock found in Disk Utility the drive A. I asked from WD support, what could be wrong. They said the slot A in case is maybe faulty. I think the reason could be in disk A connection card (what is the real name for it?). Without the card of disk B the drive A is invisible. I have also exact same kind of WD 500Gb HD with same type code like in My Book slot drives. This drive is working well, so I tested also the card of that drive in drive A. But no…nothing was found. I think I have two OK My Book HDs but only one circuit card for My Books Raid 0 array disks A and B. I know now raid 0 was wrong choice and WD My Book Studio has worked over 3 -4 years, so maybe it was time to the errors. I don’t know how to get my thousands of photo file back. Has anyone else discovered that this small circuit plate on the bottom of hard drive can be reason for “broken” hard drive. How to mount a single raid 0 drive and clone it .
I could not answer to your question but this was what I met couple a days ago…
