I have gone through 4 hard drives now because of downloading. I end up with problems with partitions not being able to be read. Ex. Hard drive partition size = 0. They are different types of drives [segate, western digital]. I never had this problem is os9! It seems like torrents and Jdownloader just dont like macs. I would appreciate any help.

TIA!

 

This is on the main drive of your Mac system? Sounds strange, first I have heard of it,
even as just a spontaneous type of event.

Also never heard of the data types you are using corrupting your partitions....
will be interesting to hear what the Macgenii have to say about this one

 

Maybe there's something wrong with the OS and that's causing trouble, just a random thought. I have 2 HHDs in here and they have more than 4 years of use each and never got a single problem like that.
(Win user)

 

It isn't my main dive. Should I use my main drive? I'm on a 2009 mac pro and I am downloading giant files.. like kontakt instruments 50GB. I'm starting to wonder if I should buy a PC just for downloading.

 

@spyderspyders just to make sure, you don't often disconnect these drives right? I once pulled my nice 3Tb Western digital drive out while a file was downloading onto it.. It doesn't work anymore..

My take on it, is to make sure you stop seeding and close the downloader before removing it.. I'm no expert on the topic but good luck !

 

Have a drive or partition devoted to data, with the OS and applications and such on their own drive/partition. I myself have a hard drive in my Macbook Pro where the optical drive had used to be; an SSD runs my OS/apps, and a partition of it contains some libraries for Best Service, EZDrummer, Battery and such (my Kontakt libs are on an external drive). I agree: make sure you close download applications before disconnecting a drive to which you're downloading, and also safely unmount the drives before disonnecting them. I use JDownloader and Transmission; they can be persnickety little bitches, so show 'em who's boss.

 

Not a mac guy, but are these hard-drives fully unusable after these events or can you repartition them after this?

To tell you the truth I don't know/heard of of any mac related bug causing it eating hard-drives,
what could help is narrowing down what's actually causing this, I can think of 3 options:

1. Your mac isn't recognizing the hard drive but the hard drive is OK
2. the chip on the socket holding the actual hard drive got erased/damaged somehow
3.The hard drive itself got erased/damaged

If I was you I would open the case of the hard drives, find a appropriate computer to hook them up with a sata cable and have a peek.
I don't know much about mac file-system, if it's formatted in one of their file system formats windows computers will not read them. If that is the case you could download a small distro to a usb stick to have a peek with a file explorer

 

I think it is option #3 the hard drive got erased/damaged. Maybe I need to limit how much is being written/read.. The last drive, which was less than 4 months old, was downloading and seeding and unzipping and the drive started clicking.. then the partition wasn't recognized. Macs don't like to be shut down without having all of it's OS tended to.. I remember with a PC I could hard reboot and have no problems. Mac partitions are fragile or something. If the power goes out I might not have an operating system when it comes back on.

I was using transmission and jdownloader too.

I have separate drives for everything. One for the OS one for samples one for downloads one as record/scratch project drive. I was using external drives for downloading. I bought a brand new internal drive for downloading now. Maybe USB couldn't keep up? I guess I can try backing up files every night, but what a pain.

I was hoping it was an apps fault. :D Maybe no luck there.

 

If your HDs are dying after only months, that prolly means they're dying of heat. I would suggest a cooler/slower/low RPM drive like WD RED/ST NAS, but icba thinking how it'd work with a mac without resorting to a cooktastic external case

Btw: those drives are ACTUALLY made for 24/7 on use, if you're using anything else, don't be surprised if they die after a few months.

 

Last edited: Jul 26, 2016

I am using a refurb for just that. $140 at microcenter. It is my Interwebs communicator (free shit getter). This way I can have no AV on music machine to slow it down.

 

I use torrents and jdownlader on my mac constantly. I doubt that's the issue. Is your new drive still under warranty?

 

It could be because the drives are overheating. I don't see a fan in the external cases.
The drive is still under warranty, I think. It is going through the hassle and the lost files that is the pain. I have the new drive as an internal drive. I have limited my bandwidth to the drive. If it fails then I will buy a PC.

Thanks everyone for helping me sort through this.

 

Never use external HDDs like internal HDDs, external HDDs are thinked as storage devices hence to work for a short period of time not hours and hours.

 

Last edited: Jul 26, 2016

i used to have a pc-mainboard that trashed HD's every few months, no idea how but after replacing it they didnt get trashed anymore. when you replace the hd's did you buy a new hd or a whole new external unit?


what you could also try is formatting the drive as FAT, i have my external drives formatted like that caus i do use a windows partition on my imac