WARNING: Pro Tools killed my external HD! AAAH!

[levelaudio]

The following is the story of how I destroyed my external drive using Pro Tools. I hope this helps others to avoid doing the same thing.

My WD MyBook 500 GB external HD was working totally fine and smoothly until the fateful day when I tried to import some audio files into a Pro Tools session from the workspace browser, then decided to delete them from the regions list (not remove from session, but delete from disk) before they had finished copying into the session's audio files folder. Pro Tools froze, Finder froze, and after waiting 5-10 minutes, I was still unable to quit or force quit anything and had to do a hard reboot. After that my ext HD wouldn't mount. After days of extensive testing and repair efforts, my ext HD turned out to have numerous damaged sectors, and any attempt to repair or erase and reformat it using disk utility fails with errors. So despite all my efforts, I can't fix the drive. It is now a $200 paperweight/doorstop.

Lesson learned: patience when importing audio into a Pro Tools session. Wait for the files to finish copying before trying to delete them!

Any comments or recommended course of action from DigiSupport is appreciated.

Thanks!