External Hard Drive Advice Options

[percusski]

First post here.
I am running Logic version 6.4 off an Ibook G4 with an extra gig of Ram. I need an external hard drive that is relatively portable to hold music samples etc thus freeing up the Mac's hard drive.It should not be slower than
7,200rpm and have firewire connectibility, I would guess a minimum of 160gb.
Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

[lepetitmartien]

If you format, you "erase", in fact you don't erase the files but the way to find them (the tables), meaning they're gone. Now, a true erase is possible on some software but on PCs, the closest you can be of it is a round about by erase and write multiple times (there's the option).

So, if you format, you loose the data. But you can beforehand always try DataRescue to recover files, and DiskWarrior to repair the drive.

On your specific issue, I believe the drive had a problem, a go at DiskWarrior would have been a good idea… Something like a broken directory file. It happens when for some reason the drive has been disconnected the wrong way for example, especially when writing something at the same time.

Remember : always "trash" the drive, wait till it stops, then shut it down and/or disconnect it.