I’m not sure if this is even an external hard drive problem, but it only seems to do it with it.

Anyways, I am obviously having problems with it. And the thing is, I really don’t even know how to describe the problem. My external hard drive does seem to crash if it stays on for long periods of time (Like a few days without being unplugged), and whenever I try to safely remove it, I get an message saying that the "Generic Volume" cannot be removed right now. I’ve done some research on this, and I thought I had my hard drive set to where I won’t damage any of my files by simply unplugging it.

But this isn’t exactly the problem. My problem is that, occasionally, some of my files in my folders will convert to these random letters and symbols. The folder would be perfectly fine one day, then the next day it simply transforms. This might sound absurd, but it is pretty much the only way I can describe it. I took a screen of the folder, just to future explain the problem.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2…HDDProblem.jpg

Anyways, my external hard drive is a Western Digital MyBook Essential 2.0 500GB. If you need any more information about my computer I’d be more then happy to tell you.

Thanks again.