External FW HD won't/will mount

Here's a little conundrum which has partly resolved itself and hopefully no longer causes a problem, but I would welcome opinions on what might be going on.
I have 2 x G4 Quicksilvers and a PowerBook.
G4-1 runs 9.2.1.
G4-2 runs 9.2.2 and sometimes 10.3.6 and is mainly used for photo work.
The PB runs 10.4.2 and is used on holidays for initial photo work with files going to G4-2 on return home.
I recently got a Formac Mini HD to act as backup to the PB. It was zeroed, got OS9 drivers and the PB cloned onto it all via the PB's Disk Utility. It was tested on both G4s in OS9 and worked OK.
Returning from a trip to Greenland with a load of pics I put the Formac on G4-2 in OS9 to transfer files but it would not mount. Silverling Pro said it was not ready. Trying it on G4-1 got no result at all (although the Formac's power light was on).
I ran Disk Utility over the Formac on the PB and it was OK. I put the Formac on G4-2 with G4-2's 10.3.6 selected via option start up. G4-2 booted to the Formac not the Mac, which seemed strange not least because that system is from a PB. However I was now able to copy files from Formac to G4-2 in OSX.
At this stage I was beginning to doubt if I had actually installed OS9 drivers on the Formac and was considering re-installation. However when I restarted G4-2 back into 9.2.2 the Formac then mounted and behaved normally. Disk First Aid showed no problems.
Then I tried the Formac on G4-1 but with no success.
Any ideas, please?
Michael

Michael,
Not too different theory, is it a power / timing issue ?
That is, once it's plugged in it takes x seconds for the device to spin up and let the world know what it is. By then OS9 has decided there's nothing on the end of the firewire cable, or "Not Ready".
OS9 was pretty poor at detecting changes in the state of all it's ports.
So external power supply would solve it, allowing it to power up before being connected.
OSX shouldn't have any issues like this, plugging it in to a firewire port while booted to OSX should eventually mount it.
You could test all this by plugging it in to OS9 booted mac, if no success, then just restart OS9 with the device still plugged in. By the time OS9 has restarted and the Finder restarted, the device should have started up in plenty of time. The only caveat I have here is power-limiting issues already discussed.

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External Hard Drive won't read/mount sometimes..

hello,
i have an external 320GB Seagate HD i mainly use for music. i installed macfuse and ntfs-3g on my mac so i am able to use it on a pc as well. when i turn on my hard drive, it either works properly, i get nothing-like no mount/read on my desktop-, or i get this message from turning it off:
NTFS-3G could not mount /dev/disk1s1
at /Volumes/Seagate 300GB SATA beacuse the
following problem occurred:
ntfsattr_preadi: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output
error
Failed to read NTFS $Bitmap: Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware
fault, or it's a
SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows
then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of
the /f parameter is very
important! If the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID
then first activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/
mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see
the 'dmraid' documentation
for more details.
with the options of 'cancel' or 'ok'
And when it does work properly, as i am playing my music it will stop and 'think' and then a window would pop up and say:
Seagate 320GB SATA
There was a timeout waiting for the file system to respond. You can eject this volume immediately, but unsaved changes may be lost.
and will have the options of:
Don't Warn Again
Force Eject
Keep Trying
in the end i would have to force eject because 'Keep Trying' wouldn't work.
Any ideas?
Message was edited by: chadwicked

If the hard drive needs to be +read and write+ on both a Mac and Windows PC, it needs to be formatted as FAT32, aka +MS-DOS (FAT)+ in Disk Utility.
If the drive was formatted for Mac, you may have caused data corruption in some way when you connected it to the Windows PC. You said
apparently I did something I shouldn't have?
so it depends on what that "something" you did was.
When you connect it to the Mac now, the drive's volume does not show up in Finder, correct? But if you run Disk Utility, does the drive appear in the Disk Utility sidebar? If so, is there a volume indented under the drive (in the sidebar)? If so, can you select the volume (which may be grayed out) and click the Mount button to mount it? If so, the volume may become accessible through Finder.
If the drive appears, but there is no volume that you can mount, select the drive and go to the +First Aid+ tab. Click on the +Repair Disk+ button. Note if any errors are reported, and if there are errors, if Disk Utility was able to repair them.

Some USB accessories will mount on desktop some won't

Have a thumb drive used to mount great in keyboard USB now it won't, will mount just fine on my PC laptop whats up? Bought a new 4G thumb drive it mounts fine, whats the difference? Have a Droid phone used to mount great now it won't whats up? Bought a Callaway upro golf course GPS (is Mac compatible) must log on to download courses, plugged into USB won't mount. Plugged it into PC laptop mounts fine logs on to web sight downloads courses whats up? Used the Disk Utility to see if the drives are there, the iMac sees the drives can name the drives can tell me how big the drives are but I can't touch the drives in anyway shape or form whats up? Can't mount them at all.

The one that really gets me is the Callaway GPS golf course range finder. In the disk utilities the device is shown but every possible button is grayed out even the mount button. under info it states all the characteristics of the drive the name, size etc. it does say the device is unformated but on a PC laptop I was able to load all the courses on the devise so I know its working. I thought a iMac would be able to see anything you USB to it. In the manual of the device it says if you plug into a mac an Icon should mount and away you go not in my case. Thanks for the help though.

External Hard Drive won't mount - tried Disk Warrior, am backing up as a .dmg...will this work?

Hi Guys,
Hopefully someone can help! Fairly desperate situation here...
I backed up around 700GB of data to an Iomega external hard drive (supplied by the client), using my Macbook Pro...all was fine when I unmounted the drive at the end of the backup.
The client took the drive away and called me to say he mounted the drive in Windows (on a PC), and he was able to work with the files for a time, but now the drive won't mount...
I collected the drive, hooked it up to my Mac Pro, but OSX tells me it can't mount the drive. It shows up in Disk Utility in the sidebar, but not on the desktop...
I tried repairing the disk using Disk Utility and with Disk Warrior, both tell me the disk cannot be repaired...
I am currently making a backup of the drive as a .dmg file, using a program called Disk Drill...it's slow as I expected, but I'm still not sure the .dmg will mount...because surely it's just making a copy of the data exactly, of which some part is not mounting (a mount directory or something???)
Is there any way you guys can think of me somehow taking the data and backing it up onto another disk?
Specialist recovery services seem to think there shouldn't be any problem recovering the data, and of couse, as a costly last resort, that's what I'll have to do, but does anyone know how they may go about doing it? It is something vastly complicated such as a command line thing?
Sorry about the length of this question...just hope someone can help!
Thanks in advance...

You didn't say what format (filesystem type) the disk was.
However, I'd say your analysis is probably correct. Something has corrupted the disk. You can make a disk image copy to the .dmg which will preserve the data, such as it is, but I doubt extremely if it will fix any file system corruption.
Furthermore, if both Disk Utility and Disk Warrior have said the disk is unreadable I'm dubious that anything else will magically repair it and that recovery probably consists of snuffling through the disk block by block.
However if the filesystem is FAT (Windows) there may be other (Windows) utilities that can fix it.
You said you 'backed up the data'. Does that mean you still have the original data on your MBP? Are you trying to recover the client's changes?

Why won't my external drive mount in Lion when it will mount in Snow Leopard?

Hello,
I have an external hard drive, a Rocstor Arcticroc 4T, that will not mount on my Mac Pro running OS 10.7.4. It will mount when I connect it to my other system running OS 10.6.8, or when I boot to an alternate partition on the same system running OS 10.6.8. I've tried using the latest versions of Disk Warrior and Drive Genius to repair/rebuild/reformat the drive with no success.
When I boot to OS 10.7.4 the disk shows up in Disk Utilities, but the volume is grayed out. When I select the volume and try to mount it I get the following error: "The disk "Media 3" could not be mounted. Try running First Aid on the disk and then retry mounting." I've run repair disk numerous times, with no errors reported.
There is no media on the drive, so I can re-partition, reformat or change the RAID configuration with no consequences.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
-Jim

the drive case needs drivers and or firmware. Happens all the time esp. with many makes and vendors due to the bridge it uses, that does the SATA drive <=> to FW/USB/etc to your Mac and whether you use FW800/400 or USB2 or even eSATA (w/ a PCIe SATA controller).
If you are using native SATA and an PCIe SATA controller.... tell us! and the vendor needs to provide drivers that are not included with Lion. Lion just 'broke' support it has had with Snow Leopard.
As for RAID - a RAID created with SL will not always support Lion for booting or mount. Happened with 10.3.9 too. And SL would not install on a RAID created with Leopard. See the pattern emerging?

Upgraded to Mavericks. Now External HDD Enclosure Won't Mount. Is there a fix?

Upgraded to Mavericks. Now I can't get my external HDD enclosure to mount. A little about this enclosure, as it's not the usual settup . I have four 3TB HDDs in a RAID5 settup. The most unique part is that they are formatted as a Windows NT Filesystem (Tuxera NTFS). Basically, when I set this up, I had to get a lot of info from a Windows-formatted HDD, but also be able to read/write afterwards. It's worked fine for ~ 1 year, but now that I've upgraded to Mavericks, nothing will mount. I ran Disk Utility, where I see the HDDs (I've partitioned them into four drives of varying sizes), but they are greyed out. I tried to mount them, but it says it won't and that I should run First Aid. So I did...tried to "Repair Disk," but it just gets stuck on "Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required." For over an hour it's been on that message.
So, does anybody out there have a fix? I've read several similar posts about people having a hard time mounting and, overall, dealing with external HDDs after upgrading to Mavericks. But nothing seemed to fit my exact circumstances. Lastly, I should mention that I've used both Firewire and USB connections. Both resulted in the same.
Thanks.

I can't help with specifics for your issue, but some general thoughts:
The upgrade and the disk problem may be a coincidence. It would help you if you could verify that the drive still works fine on a windows machine. If you run a windows virtual machine or have a windows pc, or a friend does, verify full functioning that way. If it still won't mount on the mac, try to copy/backup it's data onto the windows machine (maybe another external drive connected to it. You could then scrub the disk in windows, leave it unpartitioned, unformatted. Connect it back to the mac and format it as HFS+ (Mac extended journalled) and transfer the data back to it by sharing the windows machine external drive and connecting the two machines with a network cable.

External Hard Drive Won't Mount- Need to recover files

Hello Everyone,
I am hoping that one of you fine mac experts may be able to assist ~
Problem: External Seagate FreeAgent Desktop USB external hard drive
won't mount on desktop=ie: no access to my important files.. Please Help!
Details:
External seagate freeagent 500 GB Desktop USB HD ( only 2 months old)
(using for document / file backup-not as a startup disc)
on my Mac G3 350 MZ Blue & White Tower /768 ram/ running OSX 10.1.5 & OS9.2~
~
Problem: Started using the external 500 GB HD 2 months ago -with no problems-until this morning. Tried to double click to open it to access files
and got the "beach ball of death" and needed to restart.
My trusty G3 started up fine, however, the external HD was now
not showing up on the desktop as normal. I troubleshooted -by restarting,
trying different a/c plugs/ different USB ports , ran disk utility..called
seagate -not much help . Seagate said to try the HD on another mac-which I did-
a G5 tower- same problem.
~
The External hard drive will show up in disk utility, but is grayed out.
and when click "mount" same two messages keep showing:
message 1: "a disk attempting to mount as unknown has failed verification or has failed to
mount.please use disk utility to check the disk"
~
message 2- when unplugging and repluggin the usb in-and upon
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can read to use unreadable volumes,click initialize to continue with the disk inserted ,click continue"
~
( I really need access to these files- and do not want to re-initialize the HD!!)
I ran Disk Utility /first aid "verify & repair , the following info came up:
Repairing disk "main backup 2007 ".
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid key length ( <<<IN RED )
Repair completed. "
~~
Though it said the repair was completed, the "invalid key length" issue
still comes up when re-running disk utility...Hard drive would still not
mount on desktop-even after restarting .
~~~~~
If there is a mac genius out there that can help?- it would be greatly
appreciated. I have tried to call seagate several times in the last several hours-
1st time-they disconnected me after being on hold 10 minutes-2nd call
I was put on hold for 40 minutes ..Finally spoke to someone ( they are not mac users or mac experts!)and he said I would need to send it to Seagate's Data Recovery-... for a fee of course!
~~~
At this point, I am hoping to just get the files and photos off
the hard drive- I heard about Disk Warrior-should I use that and if so
what version?
Thank you very much!
L

Will zapping the PRAM be of any use in getting the external to mount on the desktop?
Your external Hard drive is already recognized. But it cannot be mounted on the desktop due to its directory damage. You can certainly Zap the PRAM, and it will not hurt anything, but I am skeptical that it will change the situation.
Do you think the Disk Warrior 4.0 cd will even work on my G3 350MHZ running Mac OS 10.1.5?
If you boot from the CD and run it from the CD, absolutely yes. If you attempt to INSTALL it from a download or a CD, probably not.
Have you ever used Disc Warrior and is using it complicated?
I own and use Disk Warrior. You select the drive to be rebuilt, it builds a proposed new directory from the information and file fragments available.
When complete, it will provide a list of problems encountered, tell you what files have been placed in the "Rescued Items" folder, and allow you too look at your drive using the proposed new directory. Your only decision is whether the new directory seems to be an improvement over the old \[in your case, hopelessly corrupted] directory. You then tell it whether to replace the old directory with the proposed new directory, or to abandon its work and leave your Hard Drive unchanged.
Is there a good chance that the ext HD will still have my files on it- or do you think from what I've described that they are gone ?
From what you have described, your files are very likely to still be there. Sometimes in a situation like this, a handful of files cannot be recovered.
My other thought was to take the external HD there and have them try to recover the files.
Make sure you completely understand the costs involved. File recovery using a service like DriveSavers can run into many hundreds of dollars. They are prepared to disassemble your drive in a clean room and replace controller boards and read/write heads to achieve success. Your drive has serious, but not fatal, Directory damage. The Hardware, and most of your files, are likely just fine.

External Hard Drive Won't Mount Via USB

I have a Western Digital (Model #WD2500...) Hard Drive that is about 3 years old. I initially set it up on a PowerBook running Mac OS 10.3.x. I have two newer laptops both running Snow Leopard, and neither will recognize my drive via USB 2.0.
The weird part is that the drive will mount when connected via Firewire (400 in this case). My newest laptop is on of the new MacBook Pros and it only has Firewire 800. I'm guessing I could probably get a 400 to 800 Firewire cable, but it would be much easier to just use the USB 2.0 connection. Any idea why the drive won't mount over USB 2.0?
I went to the Western Digital site, and there didn't appear to be any new drivers or firmware for this product. The drive seems to run perfectly well over the Firewire connection, so I don't see what the issue is with USB. The documentation that came with the drive indicates that it should work with USB. This is very baffling to me, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks so much!!

In most external drive enclosures that have both USB and Firewire interfaces, the Firewire interface is able to draw enough power to run the drive. Firewire can provide up to 45 watts and up to 30 volts of power per port (not all devices supply the full wattage; my MacBook model provides up to 8 watts). USB 2.0 and earlier can only provide 5 volts at 500 milliamps (up to 2.5 watts). Some newer laptop drives are at or under 500 milliamps, but just barely, and the enclosure itself needs some power.
It sounds like the USB port on your enclosure is bad. Firewire is going to provide faster transfer rates anyway, and you don't have to bother with the power supply. Based on your comments, I suspect it still might be a bad power supply, or maybe it's not the right one for the drive. Those things are easy to mix up.
If you're brave enough to crack the external drive open, what you'll find inside is a standard off-the-shelf hard disk drive, with either a SATA or PATA interface, in an enclosure. You can move the drive to a new enclosure easily.

External hard drive won't mount anymore

Dear all,
I have an external HD that would always mount without any problem on my black Macbook.
Last month, I upgraded my system RAM from 2GB to 4Gb. It made the Macbook much faster, but also seriously reduced battery life. In a drive to fix this battery problem I reset the SMC.
Now, I do not know if these issues are related, but the strange thing is that mre or less since then my external drive won't mount anymore. The external drive itself seems fine. And when i plug it into a (powered) USB port of my external display, it will mount. But connecting it directly to the Macbook it won't anymore.
Somehow it seems like the Macbook's USB port is not giving off enough power anymore. Maybe it's because of the SMC reset?
Any ideas????
Thanks

Hello maccynicwhoalwayshasmacs,
Thanks for the question. After reviewing your post, it sounds like trouble with an external HD mounting. I would recommend that you read this article, it may be able to help you resolve or isolate the issue.
USB and FireWire Quick Assist
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Have a nice day,
Mario

USB 2 external hard drive won't mount on my G4 dual 450

I had a problem with my Intel iMac and had to take it for service. I tried to hook up the lacie usb 2 external drive that was my backup for the imac to my G4 but it won't mount (using the built in usb 1.1). I also have a usb 2 and firewire card in this machine and that won't work either.
It will mount on my G4 powerbook though, at usb1.1.
I don't see why the older G4 wount mount it too. Any ideas?

Pat,
When connected, does it show up in Disk Utility? If so, it's failure to mount is probably due to restrictive permissions and differing ownership. In other words, you probably have permissions for the volume set such that only the "owner" can access it, and said ownership differs on your G4 tower.
In fact, the drive is probably mounting, but the mounted volume is inaccessible to you (on the tower).
If you find that the drive is, in fact, showing up in Disk Utility, and you wish to access it from the tower, let us know. There are steps you can take to correct the problem.
Scott

LaCie External Harddrive suddenly won't mount via Firewire 400 or 800

My LaCie External d2 Quadra suddenly won't mount via Firewire 400 or 800, but will mount via USB 2.0.
I have:
Tested the harddrive on another computer and it works fine via firewire.
Shut down and re-boot. It had no effect.
Updated all software.
Note: My MBP will not boot if the Firewire 800 cable is connected.

I've had a whole heap of strife with my two macally enclosures over FW. I've only got them working twice together, regardless of jumper settings on the harddrives. I can plug either in fine, but if I use both together, my mac shuts down and refuses to boot. One drive is bus powered, the other is powered via the mains
I wish you luck

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I updated from OS 10.3.2 to 10.3.9 using the Apple updater utility. After the update, external hard drives won't mount unless they are on when I boot up the computer.
Also music cd's won't mount, but data cd's do. The only way I can eject the music cd's is to shut the computer down or use Toast in copy mode. For some reason Toast can "see" the cd.
Also I was running Firefox 1.5.0.7 and Mozilla 1.7.13 when I updated. Now Firefox and Mozilla won't open. I had them in the dock and now clicking on them gets a question mark. I tried downloading Firefox 2. and when I double click the .dmg file I get a warning box saying that the disk image failed to mount because of "error 536870208". I get the same error message when I try and open the .dmg files for the older versions.
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John R

No. DVD's mount and work fine. Music cd's are the only ones that won't mount, and they don't get kicked out.They just sit in the machine. They are not damaged when I do get them out.

External hard drive won't mount, even after disk repair.

My Toshiba external hard drive won't mount on my MacBook Pro 10.8.5. I can see it in my disk repair, and when I repair, "the partition map appears to be ok." But I can't access the icon to be able to open the hard drive contents on my desktop. Help!

Hello maccynicwhoalwayshasmacs,
Thanks for the question. After reviewing your post, it sounds like trouble with an external HD mounting. I would recommend that you read this article, it may be able to help you resolve or isolate the issue.
USB and FireWire Quick Assist
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Have a nice day,
Mario

Updated now external boot HDD won't mount!

I have been running Mountain Lion from an external WD Passport USB 3.0 HDD as I am not rapt in it, just want to access iBook occassionally and other ML only software.
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I applied the OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2 Supplemental Update 2.0, assuming it probably was advisable for security and stability.
When I rebooted after the update my Passport hard drive won't boot/mount. It refuses to mount until I have started up from my internal HDD, pulled the USB cable and then reinserted it.
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2 Internal in iMacs and 1 External, brand new. The Internal Seagates were what caused Apple to have a recall a couple of years back.
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My external harddrive won't stay mounted in Lion

Hi gang!
I just upgraded my OS to Lion and I really like it for the most part. What I don't like is that for some reason my external HD keeps "unmounting" itself. I'm running 10.7.1 and my external drive is a WD 500GB drive using FAT32 formatting and connected via USB 3.0. The drive will mount for a short period of time, then the error screen pops up saying its been "improperly removed". Any suggestions would be awesome, I keep a lot of work files on my external drive.
Thanks!

My book world
Check here
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8422/p/247,264/c/0
I just solve the problem after 45 minutes with the lervel 3 WD support. You have to return to firmware 1.02.06 since the 1.02.10 version has a network card driver error and in some configurations (a lot more) the disk just stay connected for a couple of minutes. To do that you have to manually return to old firmware but WD do not has the file as public so you have to call them. One way to stay connected a bit more is making a permanent ping to the disk.

External FW HD won't/will mount

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