What happened to my external storage device yesterday?

Factual Questions
1

I have offloaded all my Itunes data to an external storage device because my MacBook’s hard drive is no longer big enough.

Yesterday, I got a “device improperly disconnected” message. It didn’t look like the cord had come loose or anything.

So I unplugged and replugged, and got an “unreadable device” message. (Fortunately, I’ve used Time Machine to back the whole thing up to another external.)

It gave me the option to erase the drive, so I tried that, but it gave me an “input/output” error. (I hadn’t seen that since the last time I used a 5 1/4" floppy diskette!)

So I decided to leave it and deal with it next day. I shut everything down. Today, I started it all up and everything seems to be working fine.

So, what might have happened? Could it have gotten overheated or something?

2

Chances are you had a faulty USB connection. Generally, what you would get is simply a “no device” message. The “input/output” message suggests a potential hardware failure. So I’m not positive the USB was the problem, but that’s my hunch.

There could be several reasons for a faulty USB connection. Sometimes just plugging and replugging fixes it. You tried that. Restarting seems to have fixed it. You may also have a huge amount of USB legacy devices connections that you may want to remove and start fresh with, somewhat like reformatting your USB.

Bottom line: proceed cautiously with double backup until this is resolved. That’s never bad anyway.

3

I’d start by tossing the USB cable. They do go bad once in a while.
Is your hub plugged in, or have you added anything else to it lately? Either can make a drive go flakey.

4

I restarted it a few times last night but was getting the same problem. It was after letting the computer sit all night that I got it to work. That’s what made me think of overheating – maybe it cooled down?

How do you remove USB legacy devices?

Originally, I was using the Ethernet port, because my first external drive said it was faster, but I noticed that after a while, it couldn’t “hold” a connection for some reason. So I switched to the USB.

5

I’ll try that.

I use a hub only about half the time, when I’m using a KVM switch. It has its own power source. But the external drive I put in directly to one of the USBs. I don’t put it on the hub.