Backup disk and Disk Images not mounting

*Intial Disk Utility problem:* Recently my trusty 6 year old PowerBook G4 died from hard-drive failure, with most of my data backed up on external drives. Before migrating data over to my new iMac, I performed "First Aid" in "Disk Utility" on the external backup drive. One of the drives (500GB iomega drive) that backed up my PowerBook and my PC had 5 partitions (4 were FAT32, and 1 was NTFS), somehow got erased in Disk Utility. Even though I was just verifying one of the partitions the whole drive was cleared and renamed: disk2s4 (28kb) and disk2s10 (372.5GB). This didn't take much time, so I knew all the data hadn't been cleared, and checked the Security Options for Erase, and its set to "Don't Erase Data."
*Disk Warrior attempt:* At this point, having a sorta wrecked backup drive that still apparently had data, I bought Disk Warrior and gave that a try. It read the drive the first time, but couldn't recover any of the directory information. Hoping to not overwrite anything, at that point, I didn't proceed with the "rebuild" option. Now when I try Disk Warrior, it just says:
Directory Cannot be rebuilt due to disk hardware failure (-50,447)
- This disk appears to be a MacOS standard sik
- This disk does not appear on the desktop
- This disk is 372.49 GB in size
- Disk ID: disk2s10
- File system: HFS (standard) +even though most of the drives had been fat32+
Now Disk Warrior doesn't even give the option to scan the drive.
*Disk Imaging attempt:* Disk Warrior is claiming a hardware problem (which isn't really the case), so I tried making a disk image in Disk Utility of both disk2s10 and disk2s4. I tried opening disk2s10.dmg in Finder and in Disk Utility, and get the message: "No mountable file systems." In the past when confronted with unmountable disk images, I've used VLC media player. So, I pull up VLC read disk2s10.dmg and music starts playing!!! At first I freak out, then I realize that its the first song listed in my iTunes library -- the data is there, can be retrieved, but I'm not sure how to get it!
*Next attempts:* the only other thing I can think of is to try daemon tools or something on my PC, or bring the drives into the the school IT guys.
Please let me know what you think would work that I haven't already tried. Though I have redundancy in the backups, I haven't been able to recover some data for my PhD thesis due in a month, and therefore haven't given up on reviving this disk yet.

I've downloaded the DataRescue and FileSalvage trials, and am currently scanning with DataRescue which will take another few hours. Thanks for those recommendations, its so useful to have a trial scan before buying.
*General Question:* I noticed through these various attempts that reformatting extra drives in the current version of Disk Utility has become a little more dangerous than before. For example, I was reformatting a spare disk from FAT32 to HFS+ and the drive became unmountable. This never happened to me in earlier versions of OSX, and now it seems to happen every time, and partly why my partitions got all screwy. Any thoughts?

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Disk image not mounted

I have had a host of problems since i installed a Time Capsule. The latest is that after reinstalling my system software -- another story -- I have not been able to make back-ups. The message I get is back up failed, disk image not mounted. What is this? On my time capsule there is a disk image of my hard drive on a dog eared page called a sparse bundle. I'm sure this is easy, but I'm stumped.

huk730,
Welcome to the Apple discussion!
Consider the following causes of that error message. Also bear in mind that when you reinstall the system software, Time Machine cannot continue using the same backups as before and will start a fresh set of backups. [http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1338]
*_"The Backup Disk Image Could Not Be Mounted" (Console - “Failed to mount disk image”)_*
First, it is important to distinguish this error message from another, similar Time Machine error that states “The backup volume could not be mounted”. This is important as the causes and cures for these two errors can be very different.
Consider each topic below separately. When one option does not resolve your issue, then move on the next one.
*Unmount the Backup Disk Image* (TC)
If, for some reason, you have manually mounted the Time Machine backup disk image (sparsebundle), or Time Machine failed to eject it after the previous backup, subsequent backups may fail. (Console - “Failed to mount disk image”… “Backup failed with error: 21”)
Eject the backup disk image (white drive icon) by either clicking the little Eject icon to the right of the disk image in the Finders’ Sidebar, or Ctrl-Click the drive icon on the desktop and select “Eject” from the contextual menu. Now try backing up again or launching Time Machine to view previous backups.
*“Disconnect All Users…”:*
If your Time Machine backup drive (“Backup of Users Computer”) is mounted on your desktop or in the Sidebar of the Finder window. then Time Machine may think the drive is already in use. Alternatively, if the Time Capsule hard disk has been recently accessed by a Windows machine, it may not have fully relinquished control. Do the following:
Open Airport Utility and select the Time Capsule on the left.
Click “Manual Setup”.
Select “Disks” at top of window.
Click “Disconnect All Users…” at bottom of window.
Close the Airport Utility.
Now try Backing up again.
“I got it resolved. Apparently it had to do with one of the files being open on the disk from the drive. I had browsed the disk with one of my windows boxes here and it must have left one of the folders "open". Anyway, I rebooted the TC and we are good to go now.”
*Proper Computer Name* #
Make sure your computer has a proper name. Go to System Preferences --> Sharing. Time Machine needs to differentiate your computer from others on your network (i.e. "Bills MacBook" or "Office iMac"). If the "Computer Name" field is blank, create a name. Realize that if this step is necessary, you will likely have to start the Time Machine backup process over again and do another full initial backup.
According to this article, [http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1760], Time Machine may experience problems if your computer name includes certain characters. Make sure the computer name only includes ASCII characters from the following set.
(0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ)
Once a change in the computer name occurs, you should stop and restart Sharing on the affected computer. Uncheck and then recheck Sharing in the Services list on the left.
Let us know if any of the above was helpful.
Cheers!
Message was edited by: Glenn Carter

I upgraded to 20gb iCloud but it isn't enough to back up. I get constant error messages saying there is no backup space and I've not been able to use the upgrade. Apple promised to refund then didn't. Please help is there anyway I can use this space?

Please see the subject line thanks
I upgraded to 20gb iCloud but it isn't enough to back up. I get constant error messages saying there is no backup space and I've not been able to use the upgrade. Apple promised to refund then didn't. Please help is there anyway I can use this space?

If you were told they would refund the price for the iCloud storage - Contact AppleCare and ask to speak with a senior advisor. Have the case number for the promised refund available.
If you are trying to update your device, but you don't have sufficient space to download and install the update, you need to delete content from your device. Buying storage in iCloud does not add space to the device which is what you need.
You can always update using a computer with iTunes installed - this method is faster, and will allow you to make a backup on the local computer (Local backups restore faster than iCloud backups).
HTH

My system bootstrapper crashed. I've repaired the disk and disk permissions and still no luck

While trying to restart after downloading an iTunes update, my computer won't go past the grey screen with the apple and loading bar. When I hit command+s it says my system bootstrapper crashed. I've repaired the disk and disk permissions and it still won't load. Help!

What is your Mac OS version?

Mount: Label oracrsfiles occurs on both /dev/sdc and /dev/sdd1 not mounted

Dear All,
I think i have run the following command on both nodes:
# mount -t ocfs2 -o datavolume,nointr -L "oracrsfiles" /u02/oradata/orcl
and now when i mount linux1 where i am performing all the major steps to configure RAC it gives the following error.
mount: label oracrsfiles occurs on both /dev/sdc and dev/sdd1 not mounted.
I want to rever everything and start the mount procedure again.
Please help me, my OS is oracle enterpise linux and oracle is 10gR2.
Regards,
Imran

kindly help on this.
Regards, Imran

Hard Drive and Disk Image not mounting

Hey everyone,
I'm running a G5 Dual 2Ghz. with OSX 10.5.8 I'm having problems with a back up hard drive. It is an external Western Digital My Book 1.5TB SATA drive. After using it for a few months, it suddenly did not mount anymore.
*1) It also would not appear in Disk Utility.*
a) Disk Warrior couldn't find the drive (I think because it's formatted with FAT32)
*2) I then took the drive out of the enclosure and put it in the spare bay in the G5.*
a) It didn't mount
b) It did show up in Disk Utility
c) In Disk Utility it wouldn't give me the option to Repair Disk Permissions or Repair Disk
d) In Disk Utility is says under Partition Scheme: Unformatted
e) In Disk Utility I don't have the option to mount/eject only gives me the "info" option
f) Tech Tool did find the drive and it passed all tests
g) Disk Warrior still did not find the drive
h) TestDisk finds the drive, but does not find any partitions
*3) I then created a disk image of the drive in Disk Utility onto an external hard drive. The image comes back at 320GB, which seems to be about right I think.*
a) The disk image would not mount with Disk Image Mounter. It would say there is an Unrecognized File System
b) In Disk Utility - I don't have the option to Repair Disk Permissions
c) In Disk Utility - When trying to Repair Disk - I get the error: Repairing Disk failed with error Unrecognized FileSystem
d) In Disk Utility - If I click Open - The Log file says:
+Attach Image+
Initializing...
Verifying...
Finishing...
+Image of "disk0.dmg" attached successfully+
+Mount of "disk0.dmg" succeeded+
-But it is no where to be found
e) Disk Warrior can not find the Disk Image
f) I took the new external drive with the Disk Image to 3 other mac computers but the image would not mount
*4. Other things I've tried when opening the Disk Image for the new external drive.*
a) in Terminal - hdiutil attach -nomount "volumes/untitled/disk0.dmg"
b) in Terminal - sudo hdiutil attach -nomount "volumes/untitled/disk0.dmg"
c) Deleting files System/Library/Extensions.kextcache
System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kernalcaches
ALL UNSUCCESSFUL
I'm running very low on ideas. I know I could just erase the drive and reformat it, but the files on it are very important and must be recovered.
Any help or suggestions would be very helpful. I will not have time until after the weekend to try more things. Thanks in advance if you do not hear back from me until after this weekend.

Yes, it will. But if DU says the disk is unformatted then it is also not accessible. If you have files you don't wish to lose then you will need to try recovery software:
Basics of File Recovery
General File Recovery
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive.
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.

Disk Utility shows Disk1, not mounted, and no further information???

Disk Utility shows my correct disk partitions in the top section (my hard disk with two partitions and my superdrive). In the lower section, however, there is a "disk1" which shows no information. Under that is another "disk1" which shows only 'Not mounted' for 'Mount Point:' and '0 Bytes' for 'Capacity'. All other lines only show dashes.
I looked at my /Volumes folder in Terminal. It shows four entries:
x MPBWinXP - which is my boot camp partition
x MacBook Pro HD - which is my OS X partition
x MacBackups-1 - which is an external drive on my network (for my Time Machine backups)
x administrator's Public Folder - hunh?
So, this "disk1" in my Disk Utility must represent one of the last two, I'm thinking. And, I'm thinking the last one isn't supposed to be there - or is it there because I shared it at some point, maybe?
Any thoughts on this and what I might do to get rid of the "disk1" from my Disk Utility display?

I never received a reply to this, so I'm marking it as 'answered' just to close it out.

Blank CD's and DVD's not mounting - burnt disks do!

I am unable to burn CD'd and DVD's. I insert the disk, it goes in and remains in but then - Nothing. My prefs are set to Ask what to do, but none of the pref options have any impact. I can then eject the disk using the eject button. Disk Utility and System Profiler shows the Optical drive as
Media:
Type: CD-R
Blank: Yes
Erasable: No
Overwritable: Yes
Appendable: Yes
Write Speeds: 8x, 16x, 24x
If I have a CD-R in the disk- so the drive is clearly identifying a blank.
Inserting a DVD+R returns
Type: DVD+R
ID: RICOHJPN R02
Blank: Yes
Erasable: No
Overwritable: Yes
Appendable: Yes
Write Speeds: 2.4x, 4x, 6x, 8x
The optical drive is recognising the disk.
But the burn function is not booting.
This is independent of brand of disk. It loaded and burnt disks successfully previously and seems to be related to an OS update. I do this so rarely that I cant really date the start.
I am able to insert and read any type of burnt or recorded disks, CD's, DVD's and mount them.
Have repaired permissions and trashed anything that looks like a CD pref. Have the same problem on my wife's side so it looks like it is not limited to my user account but is a a high level system issue.

A blank disk should never mount. By definition, it has no filesystem and nothing to mount.
A blank disk should be detected and perform the action that you set in System Preferences > CDs & DVDs. If these are set to Ignore (or if the system is treating them like it's set to ignore), then nothing at all should happen when you insert a blank CD or DVD.
I would suggestion going to System Preferences and altering the setting for both CD and DVD to anything other than the value they are set at now, then insert a blank disk and see what happens. Also, try to burn a disk using a burn folder.

External hard drive seen in Disk Utility, but will not mount.

My external hard drive has power and is spinning, but will not mount. It was fine yesterday. It shows up in Disk Utility and is verified and repaired. Tried the drive on 2 other macs with same result. Tried a new enclosure and that did not work. Tried all ports...usb and firewire. Any way to save my data?
I have screen shot of the partition info from Disk Utility for the hard drive included:

Hi Dominic,
If this is still not mounting, it may be worth trying a PRAM reset...
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379
Ben

Time machine full backup after disk and disk permissions repair

my macbook would not boot so i inserted the snow leopard DVD and did a disk repair and disk permissions repair, after that it booted perfectly but when it went to do a backup it did a full backup of 149GB , i am unsure why it has done this and would like to know how to stop it as i am trying to save space on my time capsule.
thank you in advance

Brycycle wrote:
i do not wish to let it do a full backup so as to save space on my time capsule but this is the log up till when it started transferring data.
I'm afraid you don't have much choice. You do have lot of space available, though.
Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
No pre-backup thinning needed: 165.92 GB requested (including padding), 507.60 GB available
The "deep traversal" means TM compared everything on your system to the backups, and estimates that about 138 GB is new/changed (it adds 20% for workspace on the TM disk - the "padding" in the message).
If there's about 138 GB on your system, see #D3 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum), for some common reasons for TM to do a new full backup.
If there's more, #D4 there has some common reasons for large backups.
If all you did was repair disk and permissions, neither should have resulted.
the reason i did a permission repair and disk repair while running from the install disk was because my laptop would not boot from the internal disk so i did both just to be safe.
That's fine; just do the Permissions Repair again, while running normally.

Erase HD in disk utility is grey, not mounted, locked. help!

i have a 2011 mac mini running Mt. Lion. it's running really slowly and i want to wipe the HD and restore it back to orginal factory settings. like the day i brought it home. i boot in to the disk utility using command-R on start up, select disk utility but my mac HD is grey, erase is grey. i can verify it and repair, but cant erase it. when i click "get info" it shows it as not mounted and locked. where do i go from here to restore my mini!
thanks!.

i thought if you booted in recovery mode then you were booted from the partitioned part of your HD, and thus can errase all your data on the HD.
how else does someone restore to factory settings then?

Server 2012 R2 user profile disks and outlook search not working

Hi,
I`m having a problem with my setup for quite some time now with Windows Search and indexing the outlook OST files.
I`m using user profile disks in my setup but it seems that Windows Search can`t index the user profile disks, hence when i`m searching in outlook (the OST file is located in the user profile disk) with windows search enabled i`m not getting any results because
it can`t index the OST file.
If I don`t use the disks then windows search works fine but because i`m using clustered TS servers I need the profile disks and I don`t want to go back to redirects if possible..
At the moment I`ve disabled Windows Search which forces outlook to search online, it works but is slow..

Next issue that popped up, after the user logs off it will deleted the indexed data and start over the next time the user logs on..
Any fix for that?
There are three other Technet threads describing the same exact problem about indexing data being deleted when a user logs off from RDS. I'm experiencing this bug also and haven't found anything to fix it yet.
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/dffeb258-b985-452b-82f3-b66b950b98b6/user-profile-disks-with-windows-search?forum=winserverTS
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/e6d4e3e6-37ef-488c-86ac-d135e3f2353f/windows-search-index-and-user-profile-disks?forum=winserverTS
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/dc6328e9-96dc-4377-a23f-0fb7020e5daa/indexing-user-profile-disk-on-a-file-server-or-on-the-rdsh-server?forum=winserverTS
my PC Techs http://www.mypctechs.com

Help! I dropped my external HD and now my Macbook Pro will not recognize the drive. I have tried to repair the disk and that does not work. Please offer help, suggestions, something!

I dropped my external HD on my hard tile floor and now the drive is not working properly. I have tried a repair in Disc Ultilies with First Aid with no such luck. It started to work then I got a message "Filesystem verify or repair failed" about 3-4 minutes into the first aid repair disk. When I plug in I get the disk you inserted was not readable by this computer message. Please I need help on restoring this drive!
Its a simple tech pro drive 1TB.

Unfortunately, a drive that has been mechanically damaged by a drop and can't be repaired using Disk Utility probably can't be fixed any other way either. The best you can hope for is to salvage as much data from the drive as possible using one of the data recovery utilities linked below, and then replace the drive.
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
http://subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id= 1
http://download.cnet.com/VirtualLab-Data-Recovery/3000-2094_4-10298807.html
If you can't recover your most important data using one of these utilities, the only remaining hope is a data recovery service, which is very likely to cost $1000 or more for a 1TB drive.

Itunes says locked disk and I can not open? I have mac book pro... what is up?

when I click on the itunes icon on my sidebar--- says itunes is on a locked disk or I do not have write permissions for this folder.... what is up with this?

Try doing a click-and-hold on the Time Machine icon in the Dock, then select "Browse Other Time Machine Disks".
By the way, you've been misled by poor field labeling on this forum into typing a large part of your message into the field intended for the subject. In the future just type a short summary of your post into that field and type the whole message into the field below that.

Help. Buy recovery disks and I have not the order number.

A few hours ago, I bought online recovery disks and not sent me the order number or track.
As I can get it?

Hi,
Use the below link to check the order number using the email address or the serial number of your unit. If this does not works, then contact HP Support on phone.
https://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/serviceOrderStatus?cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en
"I work for HP."
Please click the "White Kudos" star to say thanks for helping.
Please mark "Accept As Solution" if my help has solved your problem.

External HD image not mounted

I recently disconnected my ext HD (unknowingly) improperly. Now the HD image does not mount and the ext HD lights are blinking. System profile: Firewire reads it as "unknown device". It is a SmartDisk CrossFire product-company just sold and I cannot find manufacturer support.
Am I SOL or is there a way to recover data?
Tried suggestions of unplugging and restarting - not successful.
Thanks for any help.
iMac 500 MHz (summer of 2000) 512 MB Mac OS X (10.4.1)

"Can you further explain your second idea."
As already suggested, if you have access to another Mac with a FireWire port, you could determine if the problem is with your iMac's FireWire bus, or the drive itself. When you purchased the drive, was it and is it still formatted as a FAT-32 or NTFS volume for PCs, or did you reformat it as a Mac OS Extended volume? If it's still formatted for use with PCs, that provides more options for you, in terms of being able to test it on a PC or Mac.
If the drive has a badly corrupted directory, transferring it to another enclosure won't solve the problem or recover your files. For data recovery, I'd recommend Prosoft Engineering's "Data Rescue." If the problem is strictly with the enclosure's bridge board, the only definitive way to confirm that would be to install another hard drive in it, and see if it's recognized by Disk Utility or mounts on the desktop. If a different hard drive is recognized, then the enclosure and its bridge board are good, and the hard drive itself is probably at fault. If a different hard drive produces the same results as the original drive that shipped in the enclosure, then the enclosure's bridge board may be damaged.
You could open the external case and transfer the hard drive to a new case. You need to know whether your existing FireWire drive has a 3.5" drive or a 2.5" laptop drive, as the data connection is different. Once you confirm what you have, you should check out Other World Computing and other online sources for a compatible FireWire enclosure. For a standard 3.5" ATA hard drive, OWC carries several external FireWire enclosures, such as this one by Macally, and their own line - the Neptune and the Mercury Elite. I'd be willing to spend a little more and go with the Mercury Elite, because I think it has a better design.

Backup disk and Disk Images not mounting

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