External Hard Disc won't show

My iMac hard disc is getting full so I bought an external hard disk. I changed my iTunes folder over to the external hard disc without any trouble and removed the old iTunes music folder as per directions. After that iTunes played fine, the next day when I turned on my iMac the iTunes music folder had reverted back to my iMac's hard disk, and the external hard disk no longer shows. I opened Disk Utility and the external disk shows there but when I try verify disk or repair disk i get "FIRST AID FAILED, Disk Utility stopped repairing “disk1s1” because the following error was encountered: The underlying task reported failure on exit."
Can anyone help, i have moved other data to the external drive also and its no lonfer in my iMac hard disk meaning if I have to send the external disk away for looking at I'll likely lose everything on it.

I think what you need to do is get a second external hard disk to attempt to recover data off that drive before you do anything else by using Subrosasoft Filesalvage to do the recovery.
External drives are best used as backup. If your itnernal hard drive is becoming too full, you need to know how to better manage your data, or get a larger internal hard drive. My FAQs* here should help you:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
Good luck!
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.
Message was edited by: a brody

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Happy New Year all and thanks in advance for any support/advise.
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Commands run in Terminal:
diskutil list
diskutil cs list
mount
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Full Results pasted below:
diskutil list...
Ethan-Smiths-iMac:~ Ethan$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
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   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
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   1:         Microsoft Reserved                         134.2 MB   disk1s1
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No CoreStorage logical volume groups found
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/dev/disk0s2 on / (hfs, local, journaled)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)
map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse)
map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)
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   Device Identifier:        disk1
   Device Node:              /dev/disk1
   Part of Whole:            disk1
   Device / Media Name:      ST950032 5AS Media
   Volume Name:              Not applicable (no file system)
   Mounted:                  Not applicable (no file system)
   File System:              None
   Content (IOContent):      GUID_partition_scheme
   OS Can Be Installed:      No
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 USB
   SMART Status:             Not Supported
   Total Size:               500.1 GB (500107862016 Bytes) (exactly 976773168 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Free Space:        Not applicable (no file system)
   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes
   Read-Only Media:          No
   Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (no file system)
   Ejectable:                Yes
   Whole:                    Yes
   Internal:                 No
   OS 9 Drivers:             No
   Low Level Format:         Not supported

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Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.

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Disconnect all other devices on the bus, or as many as possible.
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Hello Everyone,
I am hoping that one of you fine mac experts may be able to assist ~
Problem: External Seagate FreeAgent Desktop USB external hard drive
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Details:
External seagate freeagent 500 GB Desktop USB HD ( only 2 months old)
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on my Mac G3 350 MZ Blue & White Tower /768 ram/ running OSX 10.1.5 & OS9.2~
~
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a G5 tower- same problem.
~
The External hard drive will show up in disk utility, but is grayed out.
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~
message 2- when unplugging and repluggin the usb in-and upon
restart:" you have inserted a disk containg no volumes that mac osx
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~
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Repairing disk "main backup 2007 ".
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid key length ( <<<IN RED )
Repair completed. "
~~
Though it said the repair was completed, the "invalid key length" issue
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~~~~~
If there is a mac genius out there that can help?- it would be greatly
appreciated. I have tried to call seagate several times in the last several hours-
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~~~
At this point, I am hoping to just get the files and photos off
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what version?
Thank you very much!
L

Will zapping the PRAM be of any use in getting the external to mount on the desktop?
Your external Hard drive is already recognized. But it cannot be mounted on the desktop due to its directory damage. You can certainly Zap the PRAM, and it will not hurt anything, but I am skeptical that it will change the situation.
Do you think the Disk Warrior 4.0 cd will even work on my G3 350MHZ running Mac OS 10.1.5?
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How can I boot from my recovery dvd to reach the system recovery C: on a extern hard disc

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It is unlikely that the back-up of the system recovery, that you have stored on an external drive, will be useful in recovering your computer. Please see HP PCs - Performing an HP System Recovery (Windows 8), for instructions on using the HP Recovery Disc set your created earlier. Typically, the disc set is 4 to 6 DVDs.
If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
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External Hard Disc won't show

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