WD MyBook Studio drive disconecting

hi, i have a SR Macbook pro (late 2007) with OS X 10.4.

i hooked it up with Western Digital MyBook Studio 1TB (external USB drive).
the drive is correctly partitioned and formatted. using GUID and HFS+

quite often upon connecting, the drive start up, then spun down again imediately.

strangely enough, the drive is still connected, the indicator light is still on, and the drive is still mounted under "disk utility", the volume however does not. if that makes sense.

should i be worried? anyone else experience this problem?

does this indicate that there is a problem with the drive?

or a problem with mac os x? - i do have freeagent pro drive before, and it also have trouble with the drive jamming mid file transfer.

thanks

 

Is the drive getting enough power to retrieve files? You mentioned that it's still mounted, which makes matters even more tricky.

You are running Tiger right? Just wanted to make sure there's no confusion on my part.

 

when this occurs are you running on AC power or battery, when running on batteries I find alot of the MB/MBP's cant output enough power to the usb ports to run alot of the WD and Hitachi external drives

 

i think the hdd is not getting enough power.

 

The external hard drive is powered by a power adapter and not the USB port (like all 3.5" external disks). I have the 750 GB model but haven't had any of these problems.

 

oops brainfart its the 1T 3.5" .... but I have been finding alot of usb ports dont have the current to run the 2.5" external drives without help

 

lol, yes this is the 3.5". hence the name MyBook, you're thinking of My Passport 2.5" drive.

also, i should perhaps mentioned that i did not install the driver/software that comes with the drive.

is this required? i dont need the indicator lamp thing, i just dont want the drive to unmount and shutting down upon connecting.

 

no
(10 char)

 

WD mybook have special circuitry built in to save power. It spins the drive down when the computer's not accessing the data. What you're experiencing is perfectly normal.

What you're saying is that when you're transferring a file, the drive will disconect just like your freeagent drive?

 

I was under the impression that wobble was having trouble accessing the disk given that it is "disconnecting." Under normal operation, the disk should spin down after a period of inactive time. When the disk is next accessed, there will be a small delay as the disk needs to spin back up, however, the disk should never appear to disconnect.

 

no, upon connecting the drive when os x is boot-up, or connecting the drive before the computer is started, the drive will spin up, then upon complete drive spin-up, it spin down again. the volume never appear/mounts.

i'm just trying to say that i have trouble with all the external harddrive that i connect to the computer.

in fact, i have two of these mybook studio that i bought at the same time. both have problem.

the 2 freeagent drive sometimes hang mid-file transfer.
the 2 mybook studio sometimes unmount upon connecting.

the freeagent in this case, will just hang during mid-file transfer.

so no one else is experiencing this huh?
i was wondering if mac's support for external drive is iffy or is it just me...

 

Have you tried the hdds on other computers?