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Issues with my External Hard Drive

R

RoadWarrior

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Joined
Jun 28, 2012
Messages
35
So this evening I have been trying to get this hard drive that came with my Mac Plus back to life. Upon start-up it would say the disk was damaged and if I wanted to initialize it, I would and rename it. I found the software for it and had it do a format for the drive, I took pictures of the formatting and as you can see, lot's of bad sectors. Don't remember the exact number though. After that I opened the Installation program that loaded the drivers so the Mac can recognize it and the hard drive worked! There was an icon and showed 20MB of space, however things started to go downhill after that. I tried copying some games to it with no luck, all the time it would say there was a disk error. I was able to save a MacPaint file to it though. I restarted the computer and the hard drive started up fine with no error message, so I tried to copy again. When copying, the Mac works the floppy for a short time then switches to the HD and then back again, well when it was time for the HD again it didn't kick on and locked up the Mac just sat there spinning. I couldn't do anything as the Mac was waiting for the HD so after 20 minutes I turned off the Mac, then the HD. Starting up again I got the error message, I started the format program again and the bad sectors was still about the same but with maybe about 50 less. I started the Installation program but this time it couldn't install the drivers and that the initialization failed.

So that is where I am now, the disk will not accept the drivers to run. Any other way to try and get it to work? It is obvious to me that this HD is on its last legs but I still think it would be cool to at least have it running to the condition it was before it messed up again. It is a "Jasmine 20" if that helps at all, I could provide any information asked for and pictures later today. Also help on what would be a good replacement. Sorry for the long read but thanks in advance!


 
Your drive is in the fringe of hosed.
Jasmine like every other mack drive OEM purchased off the shelf drives and stuffed them in their own enclosures. Generally they were not the best drives (Rodime and Connor) but some of them were sensible like Seagate or Quantum.
 
I had let the drive sit since making this thread, tried it out today and it formatted correctly after the first error message showed up. Tried copying some files to it, a little less than half succeeded in writing so I tried the Erase Disk option from the Mac menu and apparently ruined all the progress, the drive won't format again like before. Just making sure if there is really nothing I can do on fixing this drive. Also what are better options on storage? It'd be great to use something other than floppies:)
 
You can most likely open the drive enclosure and replace the drive inside with something that's in better condition. Is it SCSI?
 
I believe you can use a SCSI Zip drive as a hard drive on a Plus. I might be wrong here, although If I am I don't see why it wouldn't work.
 
The drive enclosure looks like the cover is only held by 4 screws and then slides off. Look inside and see what drive is mounted within. I suspect it is a generic enclosure from the glued on labels so many other SCSI drives will work in the enclosure.
 
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