When a hard drive warns that it’s about to fail, replace it!

Because I don’t have enough disk space on my boot drive to store the thousands of pictures and songs that are in my iPhoto and iTunes libraries, I save the data onto an external drive enclosure that I bought from Other World Computing.

Not too long ago, I noticed that it would take several logon attempts and system restarts to mount the drive on the desktop. Resetting the PMU/SMU and restarting the Mac didn’t help matters. I became really concerned after Alsoft’s DiskWarrior utility reported the following error.

Here is the full text of the DiskWarrior error report:

“DiskWarrior has successfully built a new directory for the disk named OWC. The new directory cannot replace the original directory because of a disk malfunction. A disk malfunction is a failure of or damage to any mechanical component of the disk device, or any component connected to it. The malfunction will likely worsen. Therefore, recovering your files from the DiskWarrior Preview as quickly as possible is essential.

It is highly recommended that you backup all of your data from the preview disk. All file and folder data was easily located. Comparison of the original and replacement directories could not be performed because the original directory was too severely damaged. It is recommended that you preview the replacement directory…”

Taking heed of the message, I immediately backed up the data to a spare hard drive and restored it onto a new 2.5 inch storage device that I purchased at the store.