Internal drive disappeared !

Help! my drive evacuated !
My external turned Internal 160 WD drive seems to have disappeared from the desktop. Although it shows up in the Utilities window, when I try to run repair disk, it prompts me that the drive cannot be found.
What happened to my drive ??? Anybody... ??
G4 Mac OS X (10.3.1)
G4 Mac OS X (10.3.1)

Hi Rachna:
Some older G4s do have a limitation on how large a drive they recognize (I think the limit is 128GB), and generally the response to this is to partition the drive into chunks smaller than this, which is something Disk Utility should be able to handle.
If it were to happen again, the first thing I'd try is to unplug the cables from the drive, then reconnect them (turn the computer off first, of course, but you can leave it plugged in so that the hardware is properly grounded). If that doesn't work, then Disk Warrior often will see a drive whose directory has become too corrupted for it to mount under OS X.
Andrew

Similar Messages

Internal Drives Disappeared- Help

G4/1.0 DP MDD with four drives filling the internal bays. The two in the upper bay, one with the OS, show up fine. The two in the lower bay, under the DVD drive, which were showing up fine after installing 10.4.7 about ten days ago have suddenly disappeared. They don't show up under disk utility or System Profiler either. Booting with Disk Warrior, one of the drives appears on the list and DW says it is shown on the desktop, but it's not. Repaired the directory, but still nothing. Finder prefs are to show all drives.
I repaired permissions many times, zapped Pram, replaced battery, disconected the drives, checked the jumpers and reseated the connections and all seems fine. About three times over the last year, using 10.3.8 - 10.4.4 - 10.4.7, these drives disappeared temporarily, but returned upon a restart. Now they seem to be gone for good, but there must be something else I can do to try and get these drives to show up/mount on the desktop. Any ideas?? My next step is to remove the drives and put them in cases to check them, but I have a feeling that the drives are OK and there's something else going on here. I think the bus that these drives are attached to are slower than the main bus, but I only use these drives for backup and fortunately most of the info is old and not important. Still, I'd like to solve this puzzle. BTW all other types of external drives, Firewire, SCSI, USB are all working fine and I disconnected everything peripheral from the CPU to troubleshoot.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
MacScott
G4/1.0 DP MDD Mac OS X (10.4.7)

I had the exact same issue and did nearly all of what
you did, which are the typical troubleshooting
procedures.
This worked for me: replace the PATA cable with a
fresh one that is NOT a cable select IDE cable. The
cable select IDE has a little sliver cut from a
segment of the ribbon that makes the driver CS no
matter what the jumper setting.
I have no idea why this worked but it did. I have
not had a problem since.
Thanks, but I'm a little confused. So a new cable for each drive or are there doubles? Is this a universal cable Mac/pc? Maybe the cable that came with the drive (that I probably threw away)? Do you know the link of a supplier? Would any Apple store have these??
Knowing why this worked would relieve a little anxiety. Do these cables go bad just sitting in the cpu?
Anyway I googled PATA and I'm still not sure if I'd know the difference between a cable select and a non CS. I'll continue my research.
Thanks again!
Hmmm, swapping the drives. Maybe I'll try this before I swap the cables.
Thanks,
G4/1.0 DP MDD Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Mac G5's 2nd Internal Drive disappears

Hi,
I have a G5 with 2 internal drives,
one is called STARTUP and has apps, etc.
The 2nd is/was called MEDIA and had lots of documents
and for some reason has disappeared from my desktop
I did a restart and used Disk Utility but I am not finding it
Any suggestions please?...thank you

Hi Evan Kreeger1-
If DU doesn't see it that is usually not a good thing.
Before panicking you might want to open the Mac up and check all of the connections to the drive.
Luck-
-DaddyPaycheck

Internal drive disappeared. Shows up as "Media" & 0 bytes

I recently installed a 120GB SSD drive instead of my 640GB rotational hard disk drive. I then removed my optical drive, and put the 640GB drive in its place using an internal adaptor that fits into that space. I installed OS X on the 120GB drive. Everything worked fine for a few days and all my data was intact in the older 640GB drive. I was able to copy files from it and copy files out of it without any problems.
I was copying some files over from the 640GB drive to the new SSD drive when things started to slow down. So I restared my laptop and I got an error message which said "Your disk is not initialized" When I click on Initialize it shows me disk utiility where my older 640GB drive shows up as "Media" with no partitions or data on it and a total capacity of 0 bytes.
I am unable to erase, partition or anything else on this drive. In system information I see that the Macbook pro is aware that a drive is attached to the SATA interface and also that it's rotational media. But I am unable to use the drive or access any of my data.
Anyone know what I can do? Did my HDD crash?
Attached screenshots of Disk Utility and Sytem Information

Yes, even tried it on a PC, couldn't be identified. Bought a Seagate Baraccuda, and it was up and running in no time, super quiet (the other one was grinding badly). So it was the drive after all...
DirectCanada.com are charging me 15% restocking fee. I should have read their small print before buying from them! Got the Seagate at Best Buy, easier to deal with someone face to face. Internet companies aren't always a good deal in the end.

Internal drive disappeared and no longer recognized???

A second internal HD that was installed new in my machine - now in use for over 2 years --has disappeared from the desktop. It doesnt appear in either system profiler or disk utility. I even tried to change it into another bay and still not showing up. It has alot of data on it, I would certainly like to retrieve (I do have some backups but not complete). Best steps to take?

sorry must make connection the computer this problem has occured on is mac pro 2.8 ghz quad core intel xenon

Internal Drives Disappear & Boot Problems

I have a Quad Core, I had 4 drives in it. All 500 Gig Maxtor Drives.
Anytime the computer would lock up and be force reset stuff would act funny on one of the drives, it finally failed mechanically.
Shortly after another drive had errors that couldn't be resolved and the drive had to be reformatted, it was being used as a time machine drive.
I received a replacement drive from Maxtor and it wouldn't function in the machine. After dozens of tries I got it to work so I could initialize it.
I am not able to put 3 drives in the machine.
Anytime I do I just get a white screen - no apple, no circle loading pattern.
When I get the white screen the only key-sequence that's accepted is the PRAM Zap COMMAND/OPTION/P/R. No other key sequence is able to be used....no safe boot, so single user, no option boot, etc.
All of the drives work fine when connected to any computer using a USB cable/power adapter that's distributed by Other World Computing.
At this time I can only use 2 drives inside the machine at one time.
Are there any tests or diagnostics I can run to learn if there is any kind of ATA controller board or logic board?
Please share any similar problems or learned solutions.

Apple Hardware Test
TechTool Deluxe or Pro
Disk Warrior
Intech Speedtools
SuperDuper
Onyx or Leopard Cache Cleaner
are some of the tools I use to maintain system and drives.
I have had 4 x MaxLine Pro 500GB units from OWC
I would pick up 4 x WD Caviar 640 $80 from OWC at this point.
Are you sure that you are repairing and dealing with directory corruption and corrupt files and journal when this happens? ie, not boot from the drive but from a backup or emergency?
Did you ever use Partition to setup new single partition and do a zero-all or test for bad sectors?
Reset SMC?
Sounds more like it could be logicboard but only AHT and AppleCare can fully determine that.
A force restart is sure to damage the directory, volume information block, cache folders, and journaling.
The reason I replaced the MaxLines is they tend to run warmer, never below 40º even with SmcFanControl while WD drives, even Raptors are always in 28º winter and 35º summer.

Internal Hard Drives Disappeared, Finder Memory Problem

Hello Helpful Folks,
I recently installed an addional internal Hard Drive, and an additional 1GB SDRAM. This worked great for a day, but the next morning, after powering up, system was extremely sluggish, and after much deadline-induced impatient problem solving, has gone from bad to worse (system refuses to acknowledge existence of internal Hard Drives). I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but as
the devil is in the details, I figure too much info is better than not enough.
Following is a breakdown of my system: AS IT LAST WORKED; RECENT UPGRADES; and MY LAME ATTEMPTS AT PROBLEM SOLVING THAT HAVE MADE THINGS WORSE. Please don't interpret my all caps as shouting, just trying to organize this post for better clarity.
System is dedicated to Video Editing with FCP 3, running under OS 9.2.2. System is "off the Grid", i.e. no network, no internet, no printer, no gaming devices. System was purchased new in July 2001, by a friend. At one point I know this system had an Airport card, which was removed prior to my purchase in 2003. I can't remember what else it may have had installed in its history, but here's what it has now:
SYSTEM AS IT LAST WORKED:
**bold items are upgrades Original Owner or I installed with no apparent problems**
Power Mac G4 "Quicksilver" 2001
867 PowerPC G4, 256 L2, 2MB L3
-1 Stick "ValueRAM - KVR 133 x 64 C3/512" in PC 133 DIMM slot **
- "Virtual Memory" was turned off years ago due to conflict with FCP 3
-2 empty DIMM slots
-1 60 GB internal HD (Maxtor Ultra ATA/100), 1 partition, formatted HFS+, jumpered as "Master" on Internal ATA 2 ID=0 (which as I understand it is ATA/66 speed)
-1 Pioneer "Superdrive" DVD-R/W/CD-R/W on Internal ATA 0 ID=0
-NVIDIA GeForce2 MX with 32MB SDRAM in AGP Slot, feeding a 17" Apple Studio Display.
-PCI Display Card "formacGA7" - not attached to any external device, not sure what its intended purpose is.**
-3 Empty PCI Slots
-OEM Keyboard attached to Monitor's rear USB port.
-Microsoft 3 Button Wheel mouse with "IntelliEye" (wheel is 3rd Button) connected to Keyboard USB port (right side).**
-2 OEM FireWire (400) ports
-2 OEM USB (1) ports
Peripherals that have worked in various configurations with this system over the past 3 years:
-3 OWC Mercury Elite ("Oxford Chipset") Externally powered, External FireWire(400) 200GB Hard Drives, 1 partition each, formatted HFS+, daisy-chained to either of the FireWire ports.
-1 Canon GL1 MiniDV camera, attached either to the other FireWire port, or to the last drive in the chain, depending on my urgency/laziness factor. BTW, FCP 3 has worked flawlessly controlling this Cam for logging and Batch Capturing.
Applications on System Hard Drive that I have OEM CDs for:
-OS 9.2 - (I think I remember that OS X was removed from system due to conflicts shortly after original purchase)
-FCP 3
-DiskWarrior (version unknown, purchased from Alsoft in 2003)
-OWC Intech Hard Disk SpeedTools ver 3.5
Other CDs I have:
OEM CDs for Power Mac G4:
-Software Install, OS 9.2, CD vers 1
-Software Install, OS 10.0.4, CD vers 1
-Software Restore, OS 9.2 & 10.0.4 CDs vers 1, Discs 1-4 of 4.
-OEM Apple Hardware Test; Power Mac G4, SW vers 1.2.1
Applications on system Hard Drive that I don't have CDs for, that I rarely use, but I'd like to keep:
-After Effects 5.0
-QuickTime Player 6.0.2
-Toast Audio Extractor 1.1
-Toast Titanium 5.0.2
Applications on system Hard Drive I use if my wife is busy on our Windows XP machine:
-Photshop 6.0
-Microsoft Word & Excel
# of other Applications on System Hard Drive I either don't use or may be integral to the system: 260
# of Control Panels:
-Enabled: 34
-Disabled: 0
# of Extensions:
-Enabled: 174
-Disabled: 0
note: a number of the applications and extensions are for AOL, Quickbooks, Microsoft Money and the like, as well as other things I don't use (Airport, USB printers, Networking, etc.)
Smart things I did:
-Regularly made backup copies of my FCP projects to the external drives.
-Bought a copy of MacDrive so I can see what's on my External Drives on the XP machine.
-Printed out System Profile before I installed upgrades.
-Thoroughly searched this discussion board for and gathered as much info as I could before upgrading.
Dumb things I did:
-Made a copy, but not a clone, of my System Folder to one of the external drives when I first got it.
-Didn't keep any sort of separate log of what's on the External Drives.
-Never ran any sort of Disk Maintenance, even after one of the Externals crashed (DiskWarrior saved my butt on that).
-Ignored some of the advice on this discussion board.
Really dumb thing I did without even realizing it:
Captured all media for a rush job onto my internal system Hard Drive, as well as storing and using massive jpgs for the same job on that same drive...
Which led to painfully slow rendering times, and crashes caused by "Error: Out of Memory", which I interpreted as "Must buy more memory" and not "must make sure I'm not trying to edit media stored on system drive, especially with massive jpgs that I should reduce"
RECENT UPGRADES:
Here's what I did, and how I did it:
Turned off system, disconnected all External FireWire Devices, disconnected Monitor, opened case, touched various metal parts of case and power supply to discharge any Static, unplugged power cable.
-Installed 2 512MB sticks of "Lifetime" PC 133 SDRAM; total System RAM is now 1.5GB, all 3 DIMM slots now occupied.
-Installed 1 Maxtor "DiamondMax" Ultra ATA/133 100GB Hard Drive (8 MB buffer) as "Slave" (no jumper) in top of U-Carrier above System Hard Drive; attached to middle of original Apple ribbon cable, attached available power plug.
Taped spare jumper to inside of empty drive bay, noting origin and date. Did NOT push PMU button. Carefully closed case. Reconnected Monitor, did NOT reconnect any FireWire devices. Powered System on, but did NOT perform PRAM reset.
I don't remember the exact order of what happened next, but I think: System booted up normally, a window popped up saying a new drive had been found, would I like to intitialize it?, which I did as Mac OS extended, and then named. If I was instructed to restart, I did so, otherwise did not. Clicked on "about this Mac" and saw that it now showed 1.5GB RAM. I then went about moving Media/Render files off the System drive (and one of the Externals) onto the Internal Drive, with a combination of FCP's Media Manager, and dragging from the Finder. After files had copied, dragged Media/Render files from System Drive to Trash. Opened FCP project, had FCP re-link to new locations of missing files. Saved, closed, and re-opened project, set Capture/Scratch disc to new internal Drive. At some point I changed FCP's Memory Allocation from whatever it was to 512000KB Minimum, and 900000KB Prefered (and I hope I got all those zeroes right). Did NOT restart after changing Memory Allocation, unless a window popped up instructing me to do so, in which case I did. Re-opened my project, rendered a few thing at a noticeably increased speed, saved everything, emptied the Trash, shut everything down, and called it a night as it was 4:30 am.
A few hours later, I plugged the MiniDV and an External Drive into the FW ports and powered up the System. It was behaving extremely sluggishly. I would click on something, the pointer would turn into a wristwatch (sometimes with the minute-hand moving, sometimes not) and like an actual minute later, what I'd clicked on would open. All three drives were on the desktop, still had their files, and "About this Mac" still showed 1.5GB total Memory. So I powered down, disconnected the FW devices, waited a bit, and powered back up. Same sluggish response. I tried to open my FCP project file, and instead got a Window that said something to the effect of "The Application associated with this document could not be found". I think I tried to open FCP from the Applications folder on the System Drive and got the same message (I'd only had 3 hours sleep, no coffee, my client had died, and his family was coming for whatever I had in a few hours).
LAME ATTEMPTS AT PROBLEM SOLVING THAT HAVE MADE THINGS WORSE
Panic had set in, which never solves anything, so I don't remember what order I performed which tasks, between searching for clues in this forum, and convincing myself that that would be faster than trying to compose a question, waiting for a response, etc.
The first two things I did, and I can't remember which I did first (both from Keyboard Commands during Restart):
Rebuild Desktop
PRAM Reset
Neither of those solved the problem, so I continued.
I tried restarting without extensions.
I would get errors that said something like "Not Enough Memory to Open Finder".
I tried booting from Disc 1 of the Software Restore Disk, which only wanted to destroy my data.
I tried booting from the OS 10 disk, with the same result.
I was finally able to boot from the OS 9.2 Software Install Disk, and actually saw both internal drives on the desktop, and the 1.5GB RAM in About this Mac. I tried to allocate more memory to Finder, but was informed that "Cannot Perform Requested Operation. This operation requires versions above 8.0".
I think at this point I decided that I must have too many extensions, and started disabling ones I thought irrelevent to my cause (mostly anything that said "AOL", "Airport", "Ethernet", "Printer", "Modem", "Speakable", and a couple things called "Open TPT".
It gets worse. Then I decided to turn off some "unnecessary" things via the control panels, but somehow managed to disable the control panels themselves: AppleTalk, DialAssist, File Sharing, Modem, Mouse (as I saw that Microsoft Mouse was among the others), Remote Access, Speech, USB Printer Sharing, and possibly TCP/IP.
That certainly didn't help anything (though upon restarting from the OS 9.2 Disc I was able to see the extensions and control panels in their respective "Disabled" folders in the System Folder). But I still wasn't able to get more Memory to Finder.
So, I decided a few more PRAM resets might help, which succeeded in making both Internal Hard Drives disappear. I tried booting up from the DiskWarrior disc, but even the Mighty DiskWarrior couldn't find the drives. I performed the longer, in depth version of the Apple Hardware Tools tests, which reported that everything's fine (including the new RAM), but made no mention of the Hard Drives at all. The deadline having long passed, I shut the system down. I read through more posts and tech articles, etc.
I searched my External drives with MacDrive on my XP, and found the drive that has the copy of my System Folder (which shows all extensions and control panels as enabled); not sure if the Quicksilver will boot from that, I don't know what the Keyboard command for booting from a FireWire drive is (if there is one) and the drive itself only has 900MB of free space.
I can't find any reference to Internal ATA drives anywhere in the MacDrive documentation; if it was possible I'd put them into the XP, get the files off the Mac drives, reformat them and install OS9 from the Discs.
This is where I am now:
The Quick Silver is still powered down. I removed the Microsft mouse and replaced it with the OEM Apple mouse. I opened the case, and removed the PRAM/Backup battery (manufacture date: July 2001). Couldn't find my voltmeter, so took the bat to Radio Shack and bought a new one. Had the Radio Shack guy test the old one: it showed 3.69 volts still. Have not installed the new battery yet. The case is still open, waiting for any advice any of you might have to offer.
Thank you all so much for your patience in perusing and pursuing this.
Sincerely,
Patterson
Power Mac G4 Quicksilver 867 Mac OS 9.2.x 17" Studio Display, 512MB RAM

Thank you Rodney and John,
The jumpers are correct for both Maxtor Drives.
Rodney, you are correct in that the initial problem (slow rendering/"out of Memory" crashes) was caused by my not realizing I'd stupidly captured several GBs of media to my system drive, and not checking which drives those files were on (as I'd assumed I'd put them on one of my external media drives) once that problem presented itself.
Before I'd determined what I'd done, I bought the extra RAM. After I'd found the media files on the System Drive, and saw that my dedicated media drives were too full to easily move them, I decided to buy an additional Internal drive so that I could:
-Move the Media onto it relatively quickly and finish my urgent project.
-Juggle all my media into a more organized fashion for archiving (as most of my projects are on-going long-term affairs)
-Wipe it, Partition it, and clone my System Drive onto it, as a spare bootable drive in case my OEM System Drive failed.
Copying the Media files onto the New Drive and moving the System Drive's Media files into the Trash worked great: huge improvement in Rendering, etc.
Before shutting down for the night I Emptied the Trash, and was pleased with the amount of space I'd freed up on the System Drive.
My guess is that the System Drive was terribly fragmented, having been subjected to intense use over the past 5 years without any sort of Drive Maintainence, and deleting that massive amount from it in one shot caused my extreme system sluggishness upon Startup the next day.
My subsequent lame attempts to solve the sluggishnes ultimately resulted in my losing access to both drives.
Today, I replaced the Backup Battery, pushed the PMU, re-attached the AC, and Powered Up with the case open as per your suggestion.
It was trying for a few minutes (the gray screen went black at one point, and then returned to gray) before presenting me with the flashing question mark.
There was, however, a quiet but distinct "buzzing" sound that would alternate: 1 sec "buzz", one second silence, one second "buzz", one second silence, etc. coming from the drives, even after the "?" appeared.
I powered down, removed the Ribbon and Power Cables from the new "Slave" drive, and powered up again, with the exact same results.
I powered down, removed the Ribbon and Power cables from the original "Master" drive, reinstalled the Jumper on the New Drive as "Master", plugged the End of the Ribbon and the Power cables into the New "Master" drive and powered up. The screen went to the "?" within 20 seconds instead of 4+ minutes, and no more "buzzing".
I put the Apple Hardware Tools Disk in, ran the "long" test, and everything came out fine.
I have to abandon this for now, but thanks again for your previous advice, and any more you may have!
Cheers,
Patterson

My second internal hard drive disappeared

My second internal hard drive disappeared a couple of days ago taking many gigs of iTunes with it. It does not appear on the desktop, finder or anywhere else. When I click on a song in iTunes I get "The song “Cowell: Set Of Five - 4” could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" When I try "locate," well it shows me the Main Disk. Not helpful. I've read lots of posts about vanishing drives and crashing drives on Leopard (I run Snow and was about to go to Lion). Did my drive die or did it go into the witness protection program? Irony is that I bought a 2 TB external drive last week to back up the iTunes drive and procrastinated. Suggestions? Experiences?
JCEspinosa

Is it listed in Disk Utility?

Internal Hard Drive disappeared

I've been using a 2TB external HD for the last 6 weeks or so as my main startup drive. When I set it up, I wiped the internal drive, reformatted it with Snow Leopard, and partitioned a Boot Camp Windows partition. I'm backing up using a 500GB backup which for now is covering me just fine. All of my drives were accessible and worked fine.
But after the last big OS X update, neither my internal drive nor my Windows drive are showing up on my desktop. I thought it might just need to be repaired so I opened Disk Utility to erase and repair the drive and reset it all up. The icon for the internal disk shows up, but it's called Media, and I've never titled that disk setup as that.
The info at the bottom of that window is as follows:
*Disk Description:* Media
*Connection Type:* SATA
*Connection Type:* Internal
*Total Capacity:* 0 Bytes
*Write Status:* Read/Write
*S.M.A.R.T Status:* Not Supported
*Partition Map Scheme:* Unformatted
Under First Aid, all of the buttons are grayed out. No Verify Disk or Repair Disk. Under Erase, none of the buttons are available. Under Partition, it won't allow me to rename the disk, and the buttons are gray. I've tried using Disk Utility from both the startup drive Apps/Utilities folder and also from starting up using the System Install CD, and the options are the same, nonexistent.
I've been using Macs for 25 years and am not new to fixing problems, but this is a first for me. It took me a long time to trust starting up from an external drive, but the 2TB lure was just too much. However, I need to know that if something happens, I still have my internal drive to fall back on. And right now, I'm freaking out a little (on the inside). Help!!

Same issue. Latest OSX: 10.8.3
Connection using firewire 800 to external sata 2tb drive (using thunderbolt dongle) - the drive suddenly appears unformatted. I connect my drive which i've been using for weeks - suddenly this: "the disc you inserted was not readable by this computer - Initilize/Ignore/Eject"
Of course I choose 'ignore'. It's happened to me 3 times now. 2 times on my brand new imac (Processor 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7) and 1 time on the same spec iMac I have at the office which was actually a 4tb sata drive.
This is the 3rd drive which is now also completely in accessable to to me. When I run any form of disc recovery, the content is there - but the MAC OS believes it's a fresh drive and will not mount it! It shows in disc utility as a blank unformatted drive.
What is going on??? I can't keep loosing my data. How can a drive suddenly loose all it's intergral data/why is this happening?I am scared to connect any of my other back up sata drives should the mac os be corrupting them in some way. This is critical.
Apple please sort this out. Is it due to firewire 800 step down using the thunderbolt dongle?
Thanks
Frustrated Apple user (again!).

Internal & external hard drives disappeared in Finder

It happened yesterday on my G5 running 10.4.6. I have 2 hard drives inside my G5 and one external hard drive connected with firewire 800. The second hard drive and the external hard drive disappeared in Finder. But the one that has the system on it is fine. They did show up in Disk Utility. But it said they are both "not mounted".
When I tried to repair them in disk utility, it said:
"Checking HFS Plus volume.
Invalid B-tree node size
Volume check failed.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error"
Does anyone know how to fix it? I have lots of stuff in those hard drives.
Thanks
Ti Powerbook G4 1Ghz, PowerMac G5 Dual-Core 2.3 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Sounds like you have a major problem that Disk Utility cannot fix. This has happened before to other users. I suggest you get a copy of DiskWarrior and that will probably fix it. You can read about/buy it here:
Alsoft DiskWarrior
Mulder

Can not shut down late 2011 MacBook Pro and turn it back on again without the hard drive disappearing?

Ok, I have searched for months for an answer to this question to no avail, probably because no one has experienced it before. I am hoping however that you guys can help me figure this one out cause it is driving me nuts! Also, I am not entirely sure what section of the support I should put this under so if I stick it in the wrong place, I apologize.
Right now my problem is very simple. When I turn off my laptop, and then try to turn it back on, my internal hard drive disappears... and I get the blinking folder with a question mark on it. I have figured out something interesting however. I have an install disk with Ubuntu Linux on it. If I boot into that first, then RESTART the laptop, not shut down and turn back on, it reads the internal hard drive just fine and I can boot as if there is nothing wrong.
Second part to the problem... If I allow the laptop in either OSX or Windows to go to sleep (aka shut off the hard drive but the computer remains on), when I attempt to wake it up, I am greeted with the usual log in screen of whichever OS I am in, but is frozen and after a few seconds goes black and restarts the computer to find that... Surprise! The hard drive is gone
I have tried every trick in the book that I can think of, but can not seem to come up with a solution to the problem... I know when the problem happened and if anyone thinks that that will help them figure this out I will type everything I did up till, including the crash that caused this, and my attempted fixes, but I have class right now so only if you guys want it I will type all that out.
What I am currently running is:
2011 MacBook Pro 13in screen
4Gb of Ram
1TB internal Hard Drive
OSX 10.11.whatever the newest update is... just updated the other day again.
Windows 8.1 on BootCamp 5 (yea I know its not supposed to work but it does) again, fully updated
Ubuntu 13.10 (I think? Doesn't really matter, its just an install disk I use to boot the computer)
If there is anything else that you guys need me to provide, I can, just simply ask. I can provide as much info as is necessary.

Sorry it took me so long to write back, But unfortunately this didn't help my issue.
My uncle and I did a lot of tests on this computer and have narrowed down the location of the problem a little bit.
We tried to first reset the SMC and the NVRAM as suggested, but the only thing that did was make the fans run on full tilt for the first session after restarting it for some reason. After that we tried re installing OSX over the OSX that was already on the system (not removing any of the files). This also didn't do anything but make refit stop working. Then we moved onto the next task at hand by removing the hard drive entirely and booting it as an external drive from one of the USB ports... as long as you booted it with the options key held down, it worked perfectly fine. Then we put an alternative hard drive into the computer and installed OSX on that. This time there was no trouble booting anything up. Everything seemed to work flawlessly. So we made a backup of my original drive (OSX, Windows, and all) onto an external hard drive and tested booting to it via USB. That again worked perfectly fine and booted right up with no problems. So after that we formatted the original hard drive and reinstated OSX. We then proceeded to transfer all the old files from the backup onto this new installation and LOW AND BEHOLD..... we were back to square one with it refusing to recognize the hard drive again.
So this basically told us that there appears to be something either wrong with the hard drive, or something got really screwed up in the software along the lines and by me copying all my old files back over, I just ended up bringing the screwed up file back over with it! (despite not copying over any settings of any kind) So I am still extremely confused as to what is going wrong... did some boot sector possibly get screwed up may be?

How can I "archive" mails in Mail App to another internal drive/partition to save space but still have it searchable in spotlight (and preferably visible, searchable, draggable in Mail App)?

How can I "archive" mails in Mail App to another internal drive/partition to save space but still have it searchable in spotlight (and preferably visible, searchable, draggable in Mail App)?
Background:
I am using Mountain Lion and Mail App and running out of space on my small primary SSD drive (where I keep OS, apps, key user preferences/data and mail for speed). The mail data is the big variable (many GBs) and I want to "archive"/move some of the old mail to my 2nd drive inside the Mac. But I still want it searchable inside spotlight and preferably even inside Mail too. And I'd like to be able to still drag and drop old mails into this archive folder.
What I've tried that seems to work:
This seemed to work:
1. Move the archive folder/mailbox to the 2nd drive/partition/folder (don't delete anything inside Mail App)
2. Create a symbolic link from its new location to the original/old location
This seems to work, it looks as "normal" and as if nothing happened inside Mail App but the folder now resides elsewhere and seems searchable etc. But I'm not sure that once caches refresh or over time with updates etc if stuff will break horribly or corrupt.
Is that the right way to "archive" mails in Mail App to another internal drive/partition to save space but still have it searchable in spotlight and visible, searchable, draggable in Mail App?
Thanks in advance!
Cheers,
Daniel

I'm having a similar but slightly different problem. My company just migrated to Gmail, and it's saving mail drafts every 30 seconds into my Trash folder.
I unchecked the "Show in IMAP" preference in the Gmail settings, but my Drafts folder completely disappeared. I went back and checked it and the folder reappeared (with my drafts still in there).
I like the idea if starting an email on my laptop and having the option of finishing it on my iPhone or iPad, so only saving Drafts locally would not be ideal.

DVD in external drive "disappeared"

I am actually asking this question for a friend of mine who owns an external hard drive and is trying to use a DVD that my friend inserted into the drive. The DVD appeared on the computer for a second, then disappeared. Not even Disk Utility acknowledges the DVD's presence in the drive.
The currently-running operating system is Mac OS X 10.9.5, and the iMac and external DVD drive are just a few years old. There is no internal drive on the iMac.

Leave everything plugged in and Shut the machine clear off from the back wait a couple of minutes and then restart from the on off button on the back and it should work from then on. If you ever have this type of problem I have found that turning off from the ON/OFF button on the computer lets the computer restart in what I feel is the correct method.
CHEERS
DON

Problem importing video to MY Book external. Video freezes-Drive disappears

New Western Digital My Book 320. Formatted and partitioned Mac OS Extended. When importing, video on import window will freeze, then catch up. After a few times of doing this during import... the external drive will disappear and I'll get an error message saying drive disconnected improperly. Geek at Best Buy thought I had a bad drive, but now the replacement doing it. No problem importing to my internal drive.
I suppose I could import to internal, then move to external, but that kinda defeats the purpose.
Any help appreciated. Thanks.
David

It sounds like you are doing everything right. I can only say it is working for me.
I currently capture to a Western Digital 1TB MyBook Studio Edition over Firewire 800. It works great for both DV and AVCHD, although AVCHD is not in real time.
Before that, I captured DV to a Western Digital MyBook 500GB over firewire 400.
Some random things to try:
1) Are you at version 7.1.1 (and run Disk Utility/Repair Permissions after the upgrade)?
2) Are you running Time Machine? Is it kicking off during your capture?
3) Are you running an AntiVirus Program?
4) What camera do you have? Some Canons are known for not playing nice with other Firewire Devices.

Internal Drive not visible

A day after installation of Leopard, my second internal drive (bought from Apple) has disappeared from Finder and from my desktop. Applications that know that it is there (e.g., iPhoto) can open files on the drive correctly, Disk Utility can see it and says it is mounted and OK, and a second Mac running Leopard on my network can see the second hard drive. However, I cannot save any new files to it, since Finder (or the "Save" dialog boxes) do not show it. Also, it is visible, but greyed out on a Mac on my network that is running Tiger.
I called Apple and they suggested that if I reformat it it might reappear, but this seems a bit extreme. Any other suggestions?

Thanks for the reply. However, I didn't get a chance to try that, as I finally found another posting that addressed the issue a few minutes after I gave up searching and posted my own question. That posting was:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1208729&tstart=90#5705189
I used the suggested script to change the "visibility" attribute of the drive that had disappeared and it worked great.

Internal drive disappeared !

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