External disks will not mount on new OS install

Hi,
I just had to reformat and reinstall all the OS and applications on a imac g5 for a friend of mine. I have updated all the os to 10.5.8 and have installed user software iWork, iLife, Microsoft office and Roxio's Toast 10 and a family history software called Reunion. That is all that has been done to this new install.
I went to transfer her personal files back and I can't get any external disks to mount. They will all show in disk utility but will not mount the desktop. I have tried 2 different drives formatted in Mac OS Exteded Journalled as well as MS-Dos Fat32. I have also tried flash drives formatted in each of these formats. All of these drives are readable on several other computers I have here, including a 2008 Macbook Pro running Lion, 2010 iMac running Snow Leopard as so on.
When inserted in the iMac G5 I can see all the drives in disk utiltiy and was able to even erase and reformat a drive to differnt format ( mac extended to Fat32) without issues to mount on the other computers.
Cd's mount just fine.
Anyone have any clues as to what's going on? Any thoughts are most welcome.
Thanks
pax

BDAqua wrote:
What exactly shows in System Profiler>Hardware>USB for those drives?
Boot from the Install Disc & see if they show up, not grayed out in Disk Utility.
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu at top of the screen. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
We were thinking along the same lines. While at home I dug up a firewire enclosure and put a bootable GUID formatted drive in it (that I had in one of the usb enclosures) and started her computer holding down the option key and then chose to boot from the external firewire. All usb drives are now mounting upon connection. I asume that her drive has bad sectors on it (even though the SMART status says it's OK) and is not loading all the drivers properly for USB to mount. I was suspicious from the beginning that the OS was corrupt when she first had me look at it. It was at that point that I booted it in target mode, connected to my Macbook Pro, and then CCC'd to a usb drive that I had. I then had a couple of difficulties installing the new OS. Should have known......
I am now going to put a new drive in it for her and she'll be up and running.
Thanks so much for your help and thoughts that got me thinking as well.
pax

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External drives will not mount if wi-fi is on

I was really unsure where to post this. If you think it should be in a different thread then let me know.
My problem is this. I have a Macbook that I use at home no problem. I teach at a college where there is a wi-fi connection that my Macbook automatically connects to. Recently, I have discovered that any external drives will not mount until I switch the wi-fi off. Additionally, almost everything I try and do causes the spinning beachball for 10 minutes or more at a time.
I have searched the net and cannot seem to find any reference to this problem anywhere else. Any ideas at all why this might be happening will be much appreciated.

It was not until Mac OS X 10.6.4, not possible to run on a 10.2 machine, that ExFat was supported.
Many older Macs also will not recognize GUID formatted partitions made to boot Intel Macs either.
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There may be NTFS support based on my tip here:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3003

External drives will not mount if the wi-fi is on!

I have had no replies where I had previously posted so I thought I would try here as I think that it is mainly an Airport problem.
My problem is this. I have a Macbook that I use at home no problem. I teach at a college where there is are two wi-fi connections that my Macbook automatically connects to depending on where I am in the department. Recently almost everything I try and do causes the spinning beachball for 10 minutes or much more at a time. Additionally, I have discovered that any external drives will not mount on my laptop, unless I switch the wi-fi off! No-one else is having any problems at all.
One of the wi-fi connections is an Airport Extreme. Each morning my laptop gets the message that there is a problem and I need to update the firmware to 7.5.2. (I originally set the Airport up through my laptop) I am very wary of doing this as everything is working fine for the other 20+ laptops in the department and I have read lots of reports of problems with this update.
I suppose my questions are these - 1 Does anyone have any idea what is going on with my laptop? 2 What should I try doing to solve this issue?
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It was not until Mac OS X 10.6.4, not possible to run on a 10.2 machine, that ExFat was supported.
Many older Macs also will not recognize GUID formatted partitions made to boot Intel Macs either.
10.2.3 is the first system to support Apple Partition Map HFS Extended (Jornalled).
There may be NTFS support based on my tip here:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3003

External backup drive will not mount on new mac mini. still works fine on the old one. new one is running mavericks

I just bought new-to-me mac mini running OSX mavericks.
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BDAqua wrote:
What exactly shows in System Profiler>Hardware>USB for those drives?
Boot from the Install Disc & see if they show up, not grayed out in Disk Utility.
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu at top of the screen. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
We were thinking along the same lines. While at home I dug up a firewire enclosure and put a bootable GUID formatted drive in it (that I had in one of the usb enclosures) and started her computer holding down the option key and then chose to boot from the external firewire. All usb drives are now mounting upon connection. I asume that her drive has bad sectors on it (even though the SMART status says it's OK) and is not loading all the drivers properly for USB to mount. I was suspicious from the beginning that the OS was corrupt when she first had me look at it. It was at that point that I booted it in target mode, connected to my Macbook Pro, and then CCC'd to a usb drive that I had. I then had a couple of difficulties installing the new OS. Should have known......
I am now going to put a new drive in it for her and she'll be up and running.
Thanks so much for your help and thoughts that got me thinking as well.
pax

External Drives will not mount

Hi guys ... this is my first post in these forums, so sorry if it is in the wrong category.
I have a Mac Pro, purchased in Feb this year. I have an iOmega Ultramax firewire drive, that is partitioned into four disks.
I have had time machine running well, and it backs everything up onto a second iOmega drive I have.
Yesterday, before I left for work, I saw TM was sbusy backing up. The finder was not responding but I just left it, as didnt have time to loko into it before leaving.
When I cam home last night, I saw it was still not responding, and TM was still trying to backup. All other apps were functioning fine.
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The problem has now arisen, where the partitioned drives will not mount at all. The TM backup drive is fine, and I can browse TM fine with it - so good to know all my data is backed up.
I looked at the logs in console, and see the messages saying that the drive cannot mount as it is dirty?
What I have tried as troubleshooting steps:
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•DiskWarrior - nothing. Only my TM backup drive and Mac HD show up.
•Running FSCK from Terminal. I can see the drives in /dev, but keep getting "Bad Super block" errors. When I try looking for another Super Block, it says nothing found, and would I like to run it manually? The same happens when run in single user mode.
•Unplugging the Mac and the drives from the Mac, waiting 5 mins, resetting the NVRAM and PRAM (booting up holding CMDPR and waiting for the second chime, shutting down, plugging in and turing n drives, rebooting ... nothing!
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I hope I have been thorough enough in my explanation here.
Thanks in advance,
Dave

The only problem I have, is I cannot even mount the drives to format them!
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External drive will not mount to desktop

Ok so i just bought a new hard drive and hooked everything up to my imac. However, it will not mount to my desktop.
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It was not until Mac OS X 10.6.4, not possible to run on a 10.2 machine, that ExFat was supported.
Many older Macs also will not recognize GUID formatted partitions made to boot Intel Macs either.
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https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3003

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Hello,
My name is Evan Jacobs. I have an external HD that will not mount. I have tried resetting the FIREWIRE PORT (I think that's what it's called), but that has not worked. I also have Norton UTILITIES 8.0 but the drive isn't showing up there either. Any help on getting this drive to mount would be great.
-Evan

Have you tried to find the drive with Disk Utility? Does it show up?
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x

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Just recently my applications have taken a turn to not wanting to launch. These include anything from Dashboard to the Microsoft Office Suite. It also includes anything that is downloaded form the internet, like the World of Warcraft download client. Long story short, the errors that I constantly get are
System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.Framework/versions/A/Frameworks/Co reGraphics.Framework/versions/A/CoreGraphics
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Well a google search would appear that disk utility will show you the disk regardless if it's mounted or unmounted. you're best bet would be to unmount the disk in finder, shut down the computer completely, unplug it from a power source, and then unplug the firewire...
I think this is your safest bet but then again, I'm not that worried about ejecting my disks.
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IBook is about to die, external HD will not mount!!! help!!

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actually since my powerbook will be the target HD to where I am going to store the files, isn't the iBook the host and thus the powerbook has to be restarted in the disk mode?? that was my assumption from reading the info. anyhoo, a few attempts at that did not work. I've downloaded several files on my PB, applejack, superduper and Mac OSX combo 10.4.10PPC which I've read in some of these posts will help. I'm now burning them onto a cd in hopes that they will be read on the iBook. if that does not work, the next step will be dragging onto my desktop, extensions.kextcache and com.apple.kernelcaches from the library and doing a restart on the iBook. would you suggest adding to this list your launchservices too or do that after?? thanks,jason
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Partition of external drive will not mount

I have an external, 3rd party, 1TB HD connected to a MBPro via USB.
I partitioned this drive into 2 parts, one of which I have been using for TM backups. It worked for a month and then the mount of the TM partition started to fail. The partition I use for user space still mounts OK.
My last TM backup was 3 days ago. The TM partition started to fail to mount then. Disk Utility is unable to mount this partition.
Suggestions that do not require reformatting?
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Thanks.

Great idea, Twittly.
I hooked the drive in question up to a 2nd mac and spent about an hour there w/Disk Utility running on the drive and/or the individual partitions.
Never saw a problem!!!!! But ... Diskutility did spend a huge amount of time in fsck_hfs (as shown by Activity Monitor) on the TM partition. that tells me that something is really wrong w/that parttion even though Disk Utility gave it a clean bill of health.
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I am now resigned to takng Shootist's recommendation ... or maybe I'll just junk the drive & replace w/something else.
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IMac Disks will not mount under OS 9...

...only through Tiger.
I have an iMac G3 500mhz. It has a partitioned drive, and is running OS 9.x and Tiger. If I insert a CD, it won't mount on the desktop in OS 9. Also, firewire & USB drives won't mount in OS 9.
When I'm in Tiger, these items mount without issue.
What is the problem? Anyone else experience this?
Thanks,
Chris H.

Not sure about the CD, because a CD can have various formats. Some are not readable under Mac OS 9. What CDs have this problem, or is it all CDs? If it's all CDs, the CD driver (in Extensions folder) may be disabled. You can check using Extensions Manager.
For the hard drives, they should be formatted as HFS+ (also called Mac OS Extended). Not only that, but if they were formatted using a Mac OS X, that checkbox in Disk Utility for +Install Mac OS 9 Disk Drivers+ needs to be checked. If should be by default, but if it was unchecked during formatting or partitioning, then Mac OS 9 will not be able to access those drives. And again, there may be some USB and FireWire extensions disabled, which would prevent any USB or FireWire drive from mounting.
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External disks will not mount on new OS install

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