please..for the love of everything good HELP...Xternal HD problems!

Can anyone please shed some light and help this poor soul before I go completely postal!!!!

G5
Dual 1.8
512ram

Here goes: Started having problems with my Maxtor External HD a few weeks back (clicking noises that led to locking computer up). Called Maxtor, they said the drive was going bad. They sent me a new drive (200GB) that is giving me even more fits.

I can't capture video to the drive? Whenever I try to capture, I simply get the spinning rainbow ball of death! I am able to control my camera perfectly, but just can't capture. As soon as I turn the external drive on, or plug in the firewire cable, I get the gray screen that makes me manually shut my computer down. This has happened a dozen times in the last 3 hours.

I have also been receiving corrupted files. If FCP locks up and I have to manually shut the computer down, I will lose my entire project. I tried to save the file before it locks up and it still won't recognize the file.

I'm at my wits end...please help

-Epp

Maxtor = death.

Get your money back - get a G-RAID.

Did you initialize the drive with HFS + and journaling off? Do this in disk utility. This is basic drive set up.

Hi, Epp

I had a bad experience with a Maxtor drive. I decided to not use that brand. Have you formatted the drive? To do that, I think you will have to erase the drive. So move anything you want to keep before hand.

People around here seem to prefer Lacie drives. I use Rocstor, which I really like. They don't need formatting. Just plug it in and go.

However, to avoid that spinning rainbow of death, this is what I do. I have an additional internal drive (250 gig) that I load media onto. If need be, I then move it to an external drive. Saves me from pulling out my hair.

If you don't have an additional internal drive (maybe get one) capture to the hard drive and move everything over. It is a pain, but might be your only alternative for now.

I wouldn't put anything on an external drive that wasn't working smoothly. if it's acting up, don't waste your time.

Good luck and I hope this helps.

-Elizabeth

<<<I tried to save the file before it locks up and it still won't recognize the file.
>>>

My guess you don't have a project any more.

<<<As soon as I turn the external drive on, or plug in the firewire cable, I get the gray screen that makes me manually shut my computer down. >>>

One of these three is probably damaged: The FireWire cable, the enclosure for the FireWire drive, or the drive itself.

If either the cable or the enclosure is bad, that may be what killed the last drive.

<<<Maxtor = death.>>>

Well, maybe, but a lot of people have Maxtor drives including me and they work just fine. Chances of having two of them die one right after the other is almost zero so that leaves the case or the cable.

After you take whatever steps necessary to close the job (chances of making deadline are very slim), go through the formatting process and see if the drive isn't stable when it's plugged in. Try moving several very large files over to it and make sure they survive the trip. I'm guessing either the formatting step or the file copy step is going to fail and you're into buying something else, and the G-Raid is not a bad way to go.

Koz

I looked at my formatting options and it looks like I "did" format it with the journaling option turned "on". I'm guessing that was bad. Can I go back and reinitialize the drive?

Also, it looks like it is trying to save files with .av extension? Does this explain the journaling option?

Thanks again,
And "YES" I have learned my lesson...I am definitely through with Maxtor!

You can just turn Journaling off but it is best to move the media off the drive and reformat it. This is something everyone needs to do when purchasing a new drive.

mike

The ".av" file is your aborted capture clip. It's useless at this point, and taking up tons of space, I'll wager. Trash it (and empty the trash) and things might get better.

Scott