External Drive Not Readable/Intermittent

I have a Toshiba HDD that was extracted from a Windows PC for data recovery and the drive is being connected via USB 3.0. As soon as I connect the drive the following message appears:
"The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer."
As the drive is corrupted, this is understandable. However, soon after ignoring the message and proceeding to use the recovery software (Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional) the drive is disconnected and reconnected again. This triggers the same error message as before and then the cycle begins again. When trying to initialize I can see the drive connecting/disconnecting every 3-4 seconds.
I tried connecting the drive to a different computer (Sony Vaio with Windows 7) and it had no problems, so it is not the USB cable or the drive itself. Even tried the demo version of the recovery software and all the data is still intact, but the license is not transferable.
I really need to recover the data from this drive so formatting is not an option. So, if anybody knows how to prevent the drive from being intermittent I would really appreciate it.
Working with a MacBook Pro 15in Retina Early 2013, OS X 10.10.1.
Thank you!

To boil it down...
This behavior only happens on your MBPro / Yosemite running 3rd party App "Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional" DURING the recovery process?
Drive is readable on two Win PCs?
I would say that the "Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional" is having trouble with Yosemite, but it seems that it would simply fail to run at all, rather than fail in a process(?)
I will ask our Hosts to move this to MBPro / Yosemite for more targeted help.
ÇÇÇ

Similar Messages

USB external drive not readable by mac but readable by windows

Hi, I have a usb external drive (Seagate FreeAgentDesktop Media) which works fine with windows xp but cannot be read by the mac. I reinstalled the mac a couple of days ago because it was being very slow and I had a bunch of junk on it. Anyway, after that, it won't read the external drive. It will give me an error message saying that the disk is not readable by the computer. Sometimes it will give me the message saying that the drive was unmounted improperly by windows and for me to unmount it correctly. When I go back to windows, it's there, then I restart and go back to mac, it'll give me the message that the disk is not readable. I have 2 of these drives and both of them have this issue. I also tried disk warrior but it says that the file system cannot be rebuilt. I tried USB flashdrives and they work. I got all the data off of one of the external drives into the other and I couldn't format or even erase the drive because it says that the permission was denied. However, I could format it and erase it with the installation DVD. But I had the same result no matter what format they were in. I have very important data on these drives and I really need to be able to use them with both operating systems. Thanks a lot!

Hi Schmerz Meister;
If DiskWarrior say it can rebuild the disk about your only other alternative it to reformat it.
This will of course destroy all data on the disk so make sure you have copies of the data elsewhere,
Allan

External drive not readable

I have a La Cie external drive that I use to store my video on. When I plugged it in to either of my two computers today, it says this disk is not readable by this computer, Does anyone know how I can recover or read the data ( mostly by FCE HD projects ) ? thanks joanlvh

Try a different cable, though it's possible the drive has failed. Does it spin up? Is it making any noises?

External drive not readable on new iMac

Hi, I recently bought a NEW iMac with USB 3 and Thunderbolt. I am upgrading from an OLDER iMac with firewire 800 and 400. The OLD iMac was operating on OSX 10.58. The NEW iMac is operating on Mountain Lion OSX 10.82. I have been using 4TB G-Drive for about 6 months on the OLD iMac. I connected the G-Drive to the NEW iMac via and I get the message: "the disk you inserted is not readable by this computer."
I go back to my OLD iMac and the drive mounts fine. So I backed up the G-Drive to another external, connected it to my NEW iMac (via USB 3) and re-formatted it. Now it mounts on the desktop and is acting normal on the NEW iMac. However, when I connect it via firewire to the OLD iMac it no longer mounts on that computer and I get the message "the disk you inserted is not readable by this computer."
What is going on?
Whichever computer I format the drive with, it wont mount on the other. I've never encountered something like this! It is important that I am able to use this drive on multiple MAC computers as I am regularly moving between editing systems and collaborating with other people on various Mac computers. I don't think it is a firewire / USB 3 issue as it works with both cabels (once it has been formatted by either the old or new iMac). I am thinking it has something to do with Mountain Lion?
Any ideas and expertese appreciated.

Yes. The G-Drive required a firmware update which was provided to me by G-Drive Tech Staff.
I downloaded the update and then after re-formatting the drive it now works with all computers (Firewire, USB 3, etc). The problem was connected to Firewire and USB 3.
The file they provided was called: G-Drive USB 3.0 Firmware Update Utility.
-Ben

I have my Time Machine on an external drive (not connected to Airport Extreme) and I have an external HD attached to airport extreme. Is it possible to have Time Machine backUp computer HD AND external HD connected to Airport Extreme. How?

I have my Time Machine on an external drive (not connected to Airport Extreme) and I have an external HD attached to airport extreme. Is it possible to have Time Machine backUp computer HD AND external HD connected to Airport Extreme. How?

Is it possible to have Time Machine backUp computer HD AND external HD connected to Airport Extreme.
Sorry, but no.
Time Machine will backup your Mac, but not the hard drive attached to the AirPort Extreme.
Time Machine will back up a hard drive only if it is attached directly to your Mac via USB or FireWire.

USB External drive not showing in Finder, or on Desktop

I have two USB external drives from the same manufacturer. One is for regular storage, the second is for Time Machine and movies.
The first one shows everywhere, on the desktop, in finder and in Disk Utility.
The second drive shows in Disk Utility only. However, it is functioning fine with Time Machine. So it is mounted. I have tried several repairs, and it reports no fault found. So it is certainly functioning correctly, but a setting or error in the operating system is not allowing it to be viewed in finder, or on the desktop.
Any suggestions.

Correction: Title should be Firewire External drive not showing in Finder, or on Desktop.

Is their another way like to use my time capsule as an external drive not using time machine?thanks

is their another way like to use my time capsule as an external drive not using time machine?thanks

You do not have to use Time Machine.. but the TC is hardly suitable for a NAS.. it has no means to back itself up and is relatively slow. Still that is up to you..
CCC or Superduper are good backup softwares .. and there are a number of others.

External Hard drive "not readable", does not show up in Disk Warrior either. Help me, please!

I have a 500gb G Drive Slim that is almost brand new. I accidentally pulled the cord out when it was connected, and now when I try to open it, it says "not readable by this computer." This is what I see when I go into disc utility:
I called G Drive, and they told me to download Disk Warrior 4. I did, and this is what I see when I open it:
My hard drive doesn't show up...i'm not sure if i'm doing something wrong but I just paid $100 dollars for this and I'd really like some help. I read the manual and it wasn't helpful at all.
Please help me!

Make sure it's format is Mac OS Extended (Journeled).
To check it's format, plug in the External HDD and search Disk Utility in the spotlight. Click the External HDD and go to the Partition tab. If it isn't Mac OS Extended change it and format it.
You shouldn't need any of these external applications to use it. I have one and use it like a flash drive.

External Hard Drive not Readable & Input/Output Error?

I was using my OWC 300gb external hard drive for a while and it's worked great. I had a bunch of files on it, but I recently transferred everything to another external HD I have, which worked fine, so I could erase this 300gb one. I can't remember what happened, but somehow my Macbook doesn't recognize this hard drive. I think erased everything and then unplugged it without ejecting it first. Anyways, nothing is on the the drive anymore and I get this error message:
"The disk you inserted was not readable by your computer"
This pops up when I restart my Macbook. When I try to use Disk Utility, it greys everything out on the partition and Disk Repair tabs. On the 'Erase' tab, it will allow me to select Erase, but then gives me the error:
"Input/Output error"
Does anyone know how to get my Macbook to see my drive (so I can start to partition it)? For some reason only Disk Utility acknowledges it's there, Finder won't.
Anyone have any tips of what it is or what I can try? I did try to use my OS discs booting up holding C, but that doesn't work either.

Hi there. Everyone is saying on these forums that the hard drive is failing...suck. I went and bought a new when I got input/output error and found that the new one showed the same input output error, making it impossible to partition the disk. Then the guy in the apple service center told me the new one was bad too, after having seen the code that came up related to my new scorpio 250 GB drive. Instead of sending it back, I took it out and installed the old one..however this time with a slihtly more of pressure on the tape holding down the hard drive cable between the hard drive and the circuit board. Amazingly, this time it didn't even show any hard drive at all! Then I understood what was wrong. It was exactly what was indicated an "input/output errror"! ..the cable was broken. I bought a new cable, well the Powerbookmedic sold it as new but it was an old working one that arrived. Immediately, after change of cable the old hard drive and now also the new 250 GB works perfectly! I remember that some interesting symptoms prior to all hard drive problems appeared, such as not being able to start up properly, strange blue screens, flipping question marks etc. I remember that shaking the comp occasionally worked to get it going. No wonder, shaking occasionally made it work and i believe the damaged cable maybe changed position and started conducting. The cable is very sensitive and probably should not be taped down so hard as the first service center guy at apple had done with mine when he fixed it the comp a few years ago. Polymers/plastics bent heavily become fragile/brittle with time and are specially sensitive under pressure/bent. Note that my old damaged cable still conducted and showed the hard drives but didn't work fully. I hope this will help someone, it took me 2 month to figure out..

External Disk Not Readable by OSX after Setting Drive Letter in Windows 7

My external hard drive, which was previously formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), contains all of my purchased music. I have this external drive connected directly to my iMac via USB. My iTunes in OS X points to this drive.
After installing Boot Camp, I was able to read this external hard drive in Windows 7, but I changed the drive letter used in Windows 7 from E: to G:. Bad idea, apparently...
Now when I boot into OS X, I can no longer read the drive (although I can read it in Windows 7 just fine). I get the error message:
"The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer." [Initialize] [Ignore] [Eject]
When I use Disk Utility to attempt to Repair Disk, I get the following error:
"2010-11-24 08:43:41 -0800: Verify and Repair volume “disk2s2”
2010-11-24 08:43:41 -0800: Starting repair tool:
2010-11-24 08:43:41 -0800: ** /dev/disk2s2
2010-11-24 08:43:41 -0800: Invalid BS_jmpBoot in boot block: 000000
2010-11-24 08:43:41 -0800: Volume repair complete.
2010-11-24 08:43:41 -0800: Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
2010-11-24 08:43:41 -0800: Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files."
I've searched for this issue in these forums and on the web and have not yet found a solution.
Is there any way to repair this external drive so that I can again read/write to it in OS X (WITHOUT losing my music)?
Thanks!

I had this exact problem. I bought a 1 TB My Book, formatted it with Disk Utility, and completed a successful backup. I also had some home videos on it and was using about 40% of the drive. One day, about a week later, I had the same "disk unreadable" message and soon panicked. Tried everything, but finally spent $100 for Disk Warrior and I was able to get my videos off, but it wasn't able to fix my drive, DW said I didn't have enough memory.
I reformatted and put my videos back on, but now will use a different drive for backups, so if it fails again I only lose my backups.

External Hard Drive not readable - please help!

Dear All
I use an intel imac, running snow leopard, backed up to a 2TB Time Capsule.
In order to create more space on my imac, I decided to use a seagate hard drive (that has faithfully served me for backups over a couple of years, pre time capsule) for storing my ever expanding home movie selection.
To avoid problems (and to make a clean start with this disk), I deleted everything on the drive via disk utility. I then ran a single partition on the drive using the settings of GUID partition with Mac OS Extended Journaled (i.e. so I selected partition so there is only 1 volume) . Everything went smoothly. I then copied my film collection to my hard drive. I then tested it - the films were on there and I could play them.
Now when I reboot, I get the message "the disk you inserted was not readable by the computer. Initialize / ignore / eject"?
What have I done wrong? Have I erased / formatted my backup drive incorrectly? How can I fix this?
I have another backup drive (that I keep offsite) that still is readable by the computer, so I do not think it is a hard ware problem.
I'm not in diaster zone yet. My movies are still on the imac, on time machine and backed up on the offiste external drive. However, in the need to create more space, I just need to be able to store files on external drives and then use them!!
Any help much appreciated
cheers
Paul

Most likely the drive is partitioned in NTFS format. Macs can read that format, but not if the disk is corrupt. You should do two things. First, immediately make a backup of the data on that disk. Obviously you'll need a PC to do this. Then, also using the PC, run the Windows chkdsk program to repair the disk. If it can be repaired, it should then be readable on your Mac.

External hard drive not readable anymore after a blackout.

We had a blackout yesterday and now my external drive comes up as not readable, it has all my iTunes as well as photo's that are not replaceable. When I attempted to repair permissions, it would only allow me to delete and re-format the hard drive, which I haven't done as I don't want to loose all my stuff. I can't even access my time machine to go back to before the black out. Please help.

Do not attempt to perform a permissions repair. That is not related to the problem you are experiencing.
Do you have that external hard drive set up as a single partition or multiple partitions? If multiple partitions, are all the partitions failing to mount?
Regardless, you are going to have to move to a more robust (and expensive) method of recovering your data than is available with the tools provided by Mac OS X. Your best chance of recovering your data without spending an inordinate amount of money is DiskWarrior:
http://www.alsoft.com/diskwarrior/
If the data is very valuable to you and you really really can't lose it, then you might care to try a profesional data recovery laboratory. It is extremely expensive – thousands of dollars whether they are successful or not. There are many good labs; here's one:
http://www.datarecoverylabs.com/
In the future, you simply have to learn to keep redundant backups. Keeping active files on the same device as your backups makes no sense at all; you might as well not bother creating the backups if you're going to do that. Read here for good advice on backups:
http://www.mac-essentials.info/?page_id=213

External hard drive not readable

I have a Seagate 60 GB and a WD 120 external hard drives that have been using on my macbook for about a year and it's formated to work on a mac. Recently, whenever I plug it in, it says that the disk is not readable. It shows up on disk utility, but nowhere else. It says not supported after SMART status. verify disk is not available. nor are repair disk, verify disk permissions, or repair disk permissions.
I've never traveled with them before, I dont know if maby something happened in the airports or something.
Please help.

So I guess this means I've lost this information??
There's a good chance that that's true, but there is still hope of recovering it. Assuming you have your Mac working, download one or both of these data recovery utilities and see whether they tell you that some or all of your data is recoverable. Both utilities are offered in free demo versions that will show you exactly what you'd be able to recover with the full, purchased version. Note that everything you recover must be saved to a different disk from the one it's being recovered from. If your Mac's internal drive is large enough to accommodate everything you may want to recover, that will be OK.
Data Rescue 3: http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
FileSalvage 7: http://subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id= 1

Seagate external drive not recognised

I've had this external Seagate hard drive since I got the Mac itself - around 2 years ago. It's worked fine up to yesterday, when it started making horrible noises, and today when I switched on the Mac it told me 'the disk you inserted was not readable by this computer'. I've tried taking out & re-inserting the USB cable, but I fear something more serious has happened. I looked at another thread on this issue here, but it was full of very technical jargon, & photos someone had taken of the hard drive in pieces; I really don't feel competent to take my drive apart to find out what is wrong! I looked in 'Disk Utility', but I have a second Seagate drive which is the Time Machine back-up, so I'm not very sure which drive I am looking at in there. Everything was greyed out anyway, so I could not click on 'repair' or any of the other options. I would be grateful for any ideas or suggestions!

Thanks; I tried this, & the hard drive is 'seen' by Disk Utility, but not by Finder. See screenshot attached; it's the 'Go Flex' drive I've highlighted. However I can't actually do anything with it in Disk Utility, as all the options to 'verify', 'repair' etc are greyed out. NB: This is the same for the Time Machine back-up drive as well though; no options to do anything.
I contacted the Seagate support but I guess there's nothing much they can do if it's died. Yes I do have the files elsewhere; but mostly on DVD & very time-consuming to access. & if you're using a supposedly 'reliable' hard drive as your back-up disk then you don't expect it to suddenly collapse after just 2-3 years. This makes me worried about the Seagate drive I'm using as my main back-up!

External HDD "not readable" - Any way to recover data?

I have a MacBook Pro with 10.6.4
The external HDD is a 320GB 2.5" Samsung. Using my MacBook Pro, I formatted it to have a 250GB partition for TimeMachine, with two other partitions for Windows computers as I was traveling without my MacBook and needed to backup photos.
I used the HDD successfully for 3 months with no problems. But when I returned and tried to put everything on my Mac, Disk Utility told me I needed to verify and repair the disk. As it wouldn't mount, I performed the tasks that DU suggested, but now I am stuck with four partitions(?) which are not readable. And now DU does not give me any options.
See screenshots here:
http://s1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc489/brkco/HDD%20Problem/
The disk spins up normally, with no abnormal noises. I suspect there were plenty of Windows viruses (as I had to use many PCs over the 3 months), but the last time I used the drive successfully, it was on a PC and I successfully transferred items onto it.
Please could you advise on actions or further diagnostics I should do. Luckily I bought a 16GB flash drive to make a 2nd backup of photos, but there still important documents which I need to recover off the HDD.
Thank you in advance.
Stuart

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
The Windows partitioning complicates matters. Some data recovery tools for the Mac include Prosoft Data Rescue, Subrosasoft Filesalvage, Boomerang's Boomerang, and Stellar Data Data Recovery tools. If none of them can read it you may need to take it to a professional data recovery like http://www.drivesavers.com/ which can cost thousands of dollars.
In the future always backup your data regularly*:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

External Drive Not Readable/Intermittent

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for