TimeMachine Confused: Can no longer access my external hard disk

Suddenly this morning after 3 days of use time machine can no longer access my external USB 2.0 disk. It states failed to access disk. Although I can access the disk fine via the finder. In the preferences I try to reselect the disk but its not listed. I tried rebooting and it still can't see my usb disk, although again the finder can access it fine.
HELP!

The same thing had happened to me with my new USB2 drive. I found [this fix|http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/apple/leopard-disk-utility-format-issue-screws-w ith-time-machine-but-theres-an-easy-fix-316573.php] on another thread and it worked for me (so far).
Before the fix, Disk Utility showed my USB drive partition as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), but it showed the volume still as FAT32.
I certainly don't know if this was the problem, but my drive would only randomly work with TM or the Finder. After the fix, at least for the last 12 hours, the drive has worked correctly with both.

Similar Messages

Can no longer access NTFS external hard drive

Have been using the new Mac-Book Pro for about 4 weeks now. Until last week, when I attached by Seagate NTFS formatted external hard drive to my USB port, it showed up in Finder right away and I could access files ( read ) on it without any problems.
But since last week, if I attach the same drive to my USB port, it no longer shows up in Finder. I cannot see it at all !!
Any ideas ? All i need is to read files from it, I don't need to write anything to it.
Thanks.

BTW, after talking to a Apple-Support personnel and doing a bunch of hard-ware tests they recommended that I format the external drive to a FAT32 partition.
Not a good solution, as XP cannot format a drive using FAT32 for drives more than 32 GB, the drive in question is a 100 GB capacity.
I just want to read the NTFS partition on the Mac. Don't need write access. I thought Leopard supported "read-only" access to NTFS drives. What drives me crazy..is that Leopard could see and read this drive fine until last week.... What happened !!
Thanks for your inputs.

Can no longer access my external hard drive

My husband I and switched to a Mac after using Windows machines for years. We have a Free Agent external hard drive to store ALL of our music files and, most importantly, our photos. When we first got the Mac, we plugged in the FreeAgent and it worked fine (obviously, I couldn't write to it, only read the files, but that was basically fine). In the last few days, I realized I can't access the drive at all, no icon, nothing under Computer, no ability in iTunes or iPhoto, nothing. I unplugged its and powered both the Mac and the FreeAgent down, and then reconnected everything and that did not help. Any thoughts or suggestions? It would break my heart to lose my photos. I have a lot of them backed up on removable media, but I take a lot of pictures and stand to lose hundreds.
This is a possible duplicate post, so please bear with me. Our Mac was purchased at the end of May 2012, but we have not upgraded to Mountain Lion. As the Genius in the store put it the night we bought the computer: it's better we learn our way around the system as it is now without all the extra bells and whistles.

Thank you so much for your response. I tried your steps this evening...both of them, and still don't find the FreeAgent drive. I don't have my Windows laptop here at home, but will bring it over so that I can connect the external drive and make sure that there's still DATA on the darn thing. If all the files are still there and can be accessed through a Windows machine, then I guess all is not lost. I'll have to look into purchasing a new external drive to work with the Mac now.
I apologize for the lack of info on my system. I am brand new to Mac - as stated, we only purchased our first-ever Mac back at the end of May and then I almost immediately started a new job, so I haven't really had time to get to know the ins-and-outs of the system. For instance, I don't know where to look to get OS info..all I can tell you is that the machine is 4 months old and I haven't installed Mountain Lion yet. I don't have a boatload of apps installed either - pretty much what came with the computer with the additon of MS Office for the Mac, which I needed for work and school.
The external hard drive was initially used with Windows machines, so when it WAS working with the Mac, I wasn't able to write to it, but the files were all there. Because there are days at a time now where I don't come near the computer, I can't say when the FreeAgent stopped working with the Mac.
Thanks for your help, and if you have any other suggestions, I'd be very appreciative.

Can no longer access USB external hard drive

Hi - I am running OS X 10.8.4 on my iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2009), and have been using a La Cie USB external hard drive for several years for my Time Machine backups without issues. All of a sudden yesterday, the external hard drive disappeared from Finder and my Desktop, and as a result, no more Time Machine backups I rebooted both the external hard drive and iMac several times and changed the USB cable but with no success. Disk Utility and Time Machine cannot see the external hard drive but it does appear under System Information => USB (see below). I connected it to my Windows 8 laptop. The Windows laptop can see the external hard drive under Disk Management as an uninitialized disk. But I will not allow me to initialize it and therefore cannot acces it.
Product ID:          0x0951
Vendor ID:          0x059f (LaCie)
Version:           0.00
Serial Number:          152D203380B6
Speed:          Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer:          LaCie
Location ID:          0x24300000 / 4
Current Available (mA):          500
Current Required (mA):          2
Any help to restore the external hard drive would be appreciated.
Ron

Thank you for your quick response. Disk Utility does not see the hard drive. Windows 8 does see it under Device Manager and says that it is working propoerly but it will not allow me to initialize it.   As indicated to Lin Davis, I'll buy a new external hard drive.

After I installed Lion, my MacBook Pro can no longer detect my external hard drives or my USB flash drives. What should I do?

After I installed Lion, my MacBook Pro can no longer detect my external hard drives or my USB flash drives. What should I do?

And me -- My Mac at work running Snow Leopard reads the drive normally. My home Mac (on Lion) can't even find it....
Yet another Leo let-down.....

How can I get my LaCie external hard disk icon to reappear on my desktop?

The iMac discussion section does not seem open to me asking this question. It's geared to the Intel Macs or other categories which do not allow for me to type in the following question:
Bottom Line Question:
How can I get my La Cie external hard disk icon to re-appear on my desktop?
Background:
I clicked Go > Computer
At that point there the usual set of icons in the far left hand column, including one for my LaCie external hard disk. Near that icon there was a dark upturned truncated/shortened arrow. I absent-mindedly clicked on that dark arrow, and at that moment I could hear my LaCie external hard drive power down; I heard the sound of hardware powering down.
The LaCie external hard drive is sitting right next to my iMac and its blue light is ON so I know that at very least I didn't turn it off.
But where is it?
And how can I get it to reappear on my desktop?
Right now when I click onto Go > Computer, the LaCie external hard drive disk is NOT THERE.
Thank you.
Lorna in Southern California

James, yes. I put the question in the iMac section and did get some solutions. My LaCie external hard drive is back now. I was aware that the arrow is connected to Eject actions, but was concerned when I went to Finder Preferences and selected the LaCie to show up on the Desktop, and its icon did not show up on the desktop. I hope you and your family are enjoying the weekend, James. But how could you not: You have little Kate there with you. Lorna in Southern California

How can i put files in external hard disk??

i want to put two 2 video files to an external hard disk
i cannot figure it out!!!
plz help!!!!

GOTO Finder top of menu bar on desktop....then PREFERENCE......then GENERAL tab.....then check "hard disks".....it will show your EXTERNAL HD on the desktop,....click to open......
drag files into the HD file folder. easy.

Why can I no longer access my external hard drive?

I've been accessing my (powered) external hard drive for several months through my AirPort. It was never formatted for a Mac, since I had purchased it when i was still using a PC. And we still have PCs in the house that I want to be able to have access as well.
When I purchased the AirPort I was told that I could use it as an external drive, so I had moved some files onto it. Then... I was told, NO, don't put files on your AirPort because it could eventually lead to corrupt files in the Time Machine.
Yesterday, I was in the process of removing files from the AirPort and copying them to the external drive. I hit a point where my computer seemed to be thinking too hard and too long. The majority of the file transfers had been fine, but when I went to look at the external drive it appeared to be empty. After a bit of freaking out, we plugged the external drive directly into my Mac book to confirm that the files are still there. I've rebooted the computer, powered down the AirPort, and powered down the external drive to no avail.
While speaking with Apple customer service last night, we reset the AirPort as well. Nothing. I was finally told that my only option was to reformat the external drive. I'm hoping that someone here might have more insight before I jump through moving everything again.

#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            999.3 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

I can no longer access my Time Capsule disk

After upgrading to SL, I can't connect to the disk in my Time Capsule. It shows up in the Shared part of the Finder sidebar as usual, but clicking on it generates a gray bar that says "Connection Failed." On the right-hand side of this bar is a "Connect As' button, and clicking this gives an error popup that says: "There was an error connecting to the server “Wonderland”. Check the server name or IP address, and then try again. If you are unable to resolve the problem contact your system administrator." I don't know how to change the server name or IP address, and when I enter the IP directly from "Connect to Server" I get the same error message. Trying to set up the disk in Time Machine also gives the same error.
The odd thing is that the disk is visible in Airport Utility, which even tells me how much space is being used. "Enable file sharing" is still checked.
Any ideas what I can do?

Sad to report that unplugging and re-plugging the hard drive did not help. I had high hopes!
Un-mounting and re-mounting the external hard drive didn't help either.
I've moved on to deleting the time machine preferences per another suggestion in another thread - still no luck.
I continue to get the Making Backup Disk Available warning in the Time Machine Preferences window as the little progress bar spins for 20+ minutes. The whole time, I can hear the external hard drive clicking and chirping like it's being accessed- then the Time Machine preference window reports the same past warning: *The backup disk image “/Volumes/300GB BACKUP/myname’s Mac mini_00254bb40536.sparsebundle” could not be accessed (error 109)*
Off to cruise some more forums for a possible fix - suggestions continue to be welcome!
Jamie

Since last leopard update, i can no longer see my external hard drive

After last leopard update my external hard drive is no longer visible on the desktop, tried connecting to the laptop but this has also had the same update and the same problem, any ideas??

Open Disk Utility, select the External Hard Drives first icon in the list of Drives, click the Repair Disk button.
Dennis

Since upgrading to Lion I can no longer mount my external hard drive

I backed up about 10 minutes before installing Lion when I was on Snow Leopard. I know my drive works fine and there are no issues with it.
However, when Lion was installed, I wanted to perform a Time Machine Backup, but it said my backup disk was unavailable. I checked in the Finder and it wasn't showing up in the side bar, even though it was connected to my Mac and the indicator light on the hard drive itself was flashing - suggesting drive activity. I can also hear the drive spinning.
I opened Disk Utility and the external hard drive appears in the side bar and it says 'WD My Passport 071A Media'. Underneath that is the 'Time Machine Backups' drive which is greyed out. I have tried right clicking on it and choosing Mount but it won't mount, and I have also tried Repair Disk which doesn't finish, but also doesn't report any errors either. If I run Verify Disk and Repair Disk on the 'WD My Passport 071A Media' drive (which is the same drive) it does not report any problems and says the drive is working fine.
I have tried updating the drive's firmware and using different ports but neither have worked. I have also tried rebooting my Mac.
I really need to use this drive to backup and I can't format it because I can't afford to lose any data on there. Could someone please give me some advice or tell me how to fix this? I would appreciate it so much.
Thanks,
Nathan

Nathan Miah wrote:
Is there absolutely anything else I could do to sort this such as phone Apple Support
If you want.
or maybe install Snow Leopard using the disc it came on with my Mac and just set it up from a Time Machine Backup on my external hard drive (since it works under SL)?
Did you install Lion on an empty partition, or did you upgrade Snow Leopard? If you upgraded, I'd not recommend erasing it, since your backups are apparently gone. It's doubtful Snow Leopard will recognize them.
It's not just backups on the drive either, there are other important things on there, so why won't they show?
Mixing Time Machine backups and other data is not a good idea. See #3 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions. It sounds like the whole disk is corrupted.
I just really don't understand how this happened. Could it not be an issue with WD because they haven't issued firmware to support Lion yet?
If this is a simple external HD, connected by USB or FireWire, no, unless you installed some of WD's software on it. That shouldn't prevent it from being seen at all, but anything's possible.

Can anyone recommend a 1tb external hard disk?

I'm looking to purchase yet another external hard drive. I've already got a couple of LaCie disks (80gb & 300gb), the latter of which is now full of Apple Lossless files and converted ACC files for my iPod.
As I keep seeming to underestimate my space requirements, I'm looking to get a 1tb disk. Initially I was going to go with another LaCie drive but I've read quite a lot of bad things about them.
I need something that's going to be reliable and fast. Ideally with FW400/FW800 and usb2 interfaces. From what I've discovered so far it seems that the G-Tech and the OWC Mercury Elite drives seem to be the best.
Can anyone either recommend one to me or warn me about others?
Many thanks
Mark
PowerMacG4 DualSU Mac OS X (10.4.7) LaCie 80gb, LaCie d2 extreme (triple interface) 300gb, iPod Photo 60gb
PowerMacG4 DualSU Mac OS X (10.4.7) LaCie 80gb, LaCie d2 extreme (triple interface) 300gb, iPod Photo 60gb

Thanks for your input Chris.
I've been trawling through Google searches to find reviews of various drives. I guess that I'm looking for a pair of 500gb mirrored RAID drives with USB2, Firewire 400 & 800 connections.
I'm having trouble getting away from Other World Computing's Mercury Elite–AL Pro 800 RAID STRIPE FireWire 800/400.
http://eshop.macsales.com/CustomizedPages/Framework.cfm?page=mealp/mealpraid.html
But my trouble now is that I can't find a UK stockist so I think I'll have to start looking for other brands such as Maxtor.
Can anyone recommend a reliable manafacturer ??
PowerMacG4 DualSU Mac OS X (10.4.7) LaCie 80gb, LaCie d2 extreme (triple interface) 300gb, iPod Photo & Video 60gb

I updated FCPX to 10.9 after I had updated my os to 10.9.1. And the result is that FCPx can no longer read LaCie external hard drive where all the projects and events are stored. The program simply crashes every time I try to read anything from the LaCie.

Could anyone tell me what to do to solve the problem. I updated FCPX to 10.9 and the program keeps on crash every time I try to read files stored in my LaCie hard drive. And the program also keeps on crash every time I try to import files from my SDXC cards.

I have solved the problem. Once the update is done, you need to launch FCPX, and go to File, then "update all events and projects". It will solve the problem and everything works fine.

I have recently bought macbook air, previously i was using macbook pro 13". I have a problem in accessing my external hard disk, on which i used to take backup through time machine on my earlier macbook pro. I am not able to access the hard disk.

My new macbook air is not even detecting the external disk, leave alone reading it. I have important documents as time machine backup on the external disk. Please help in resolving this issue.
Thanks

The warranty entitles you to complimentary phone support for the first 90 days of ownership.
If you bought the product in the U.S. directly from Apple (not from a reseller), you have 14 days from the date of delivery in which to exchange or return it for a refund. In other countries, the return policy may be different. If you bought from a reseller, its return policy applies.

How can I see if an external Hard Disk has spun down?

Does anybody know? Where or how?
Thanks

I use patented FeelSpin®. I just put my hand on the enclosure. If it's not spinning, I can feel there's no vibration, even the slightest. Not being a smartass: low tech solution works for me.
I suppose it might not work if the enclosure/drive when spinning transmits absoutely no vibration. Put your hand on the enclosure while the drive is spinning, then unmount the drive and feel the difference.

TimeMachine Confused: Can no longer access my external hard disk

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for