that made the difference! The point at which it would normally crash my mac, it instead provided an error message stating the drive needed to be repaired/formatted, but that I could copy files locally first. That was great news! I'm backing the photos to dropbox now, then I'll wipe it and start again.
While I've got you, once repaired, is thunderbolt faster than the USB3, or should I just keep using this new USB3 "sync cable" since it solved the problem and not worry about any speed difference?
And finally, I should probably place this in a different post, but I was thinking of getting an actual SSD backup external drive since they're so screaming fast. Any model recommendations and which connection from my 2013 macbookpro should I be looking for, thunderbolt or USB3? And does it make more sense to get an internal drive with a connection doc when looking at SSD?
Again, I apologize if this is an inappropriate post for this forum... just ignore if so.
Thanks,
Dave