External Hard disk not being detected.

External Hard disk is corrupt. It was plugged into an Xbox and fidgetted around. I think the kid playing with it clicked on format but before it could do anything i unplugged it. But in the process this drive is not getting detected any more and all the data on the drive is non accessable. Is there anything that can be done to recover the data?

but no partition
Yes, you interrupted a formatting.
Since the "other person" commanded a format (why?), which is very quick operation, youve got a nasty mess as per the HD.
This is why having a minimum secondary redundancy of all data on an external HD is necessity.
Remaining option is pricey data recovery specialists.

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Hard disk not being detected / Finding compatible replacement

Hi,
I have a late 2007 macbook (white). I was using it when it froze while listening to itunes. I've pressed the power button to turn it off and turn it back on.
Unfortunately it did not boot. I've inserted the leopard upgrade disc and booted with the C pressed.
It entered the installation and I selected the disk utility. Unfortunately it only shows the DVD drive and not the HD. I have a time machine disk and inserted and it recognized the external disk but not the internal one.
I am assuming the worse scenario that the primary HD is gone. Since I am nowhere near an apple store/repair center I'd like to know what kind of extra steps can I do in order to confirm my assumption and if that's the case which HDs are compatible?
I found some steps to replace the disk (http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/MacBook-Core-2-Duo-Hard-Drive-Replacement/514 /1).
Regards.

Start by:
How to run hardware diagnostics for an Intel Mac
Boot from your original OS X Installer Disc One that came with your computer. After the chime press and hold down the "D" key until the diagnostic screen appears. Run the extended tests for a minimum of two or three hours. If any error messages appear note them down as you will need to report them to the service tech when you take the computer in for repair.
Some "common" error indicators:
SNS - sensor error
MEM - memory error
HDD - hard disk drive error
MOT - fan error
Shut the computer off for 5 minutes to an hour. Restart with the Installer Disc and see if DU now recognizes the hard drive. If so check the SMART status. If it says "Failed" then the drive should be replaced. Otherwise if the drive is still not usable then you should do the following:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the drop down menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

My external hard disk not working properly in my macbook pro . anyone help me . its seagate hard disk

My external hard disk not working properly in my macbook pro . anyone help me . its seagate hard disk

You need to get some software that allows your Mac to read and write to the NTFS disk. There's a whole bunch of stuff out there, but this program has a good review, and you can try it for free. I would move everything off of your external drive, reformat it into Mac OSX extended, and use it for your Mac. You don't need NTFS anymore, unless you still have a Windows computer that needs it.

External hard disk not detecting

Hi, I am using WD 1 TB external hard disk and it was going all good till now one day my friend asked for my hard disk as he need to back up some data and connected it to PC. Now I am trying to connect it to mac but mac is not detecting.
My hard disk has all my softwares and other important data.
Need help ASAP

repair disk just checks for errors
likely its a PC formatted HD, thats why you cant read it
Formatting ERASES a HD, so dont do that to the other persons HD.
check what the format of it is. If its NTFS youd need an APP like Paragon to read / write to it.

External hard disk not recognized by time machine

I have an external backup disk, Passport, that is no longer recognized by time machine or my computer. I used it a couple of weeks ago to restore my wife's MacBook. Hers is an older model and uses Lion. Since then my MacBook Pro--mavericks will not mount the external hard disk.
OKAY==after leaving the Passport on for a couple of hours it now is mounted. Don't know what happened, but it is now working.
CANCEL problems

I see it's now working but make sure you are running the latest version of WD software.
http://community.wd.com/t5/News-Announcements/New-Release-WD-SmartWare-Version-1 -3-6-for-Mac-10-5-10-9-11-25/td-p/628441

External hard-disk not working with firewire under Snow Leopard

Hi. I have a LaCie d2 external hard-disk that has Firewire 800, 400 and usb2. I previously used it on my old (angle-poise) iMac connecting using the Firewire 400 socket. I've just a got a new mac with Snow Leopard and I thought it would we best to connect to the LaCie with Firewire 800. However when I do this, the disc mounts ok, but browsing in the Finder is really slow and copying files from the disk to the imac seems to work at a really slow rate (less than USB1 speed) if at all ! However, I switched to using the USB2 connection instead and it works like a dream. What gives ? Is Firewire in Snow Leopard buggy ??

There's no problem with the drive.
Maybe true, and the drive would probably work fine with Leopard. One thing that's obvious is that Apple did make changes in the way that FireWire works in Snow Leopard. Many drives and drive manufacturers work well with SL, but there have also been reports of firmware issues by Western Digital and other companies.
Have you checked with your vendor to see if they are offering a firmware update for your drive?
BTW, I got a new FW case a few months ago while at a Fry's electronic store. The brand new USB2 and FW400 cables worked fine. The FW800 cable did not, but another cable came to the rescue. Just saying...

External Hard Disk not showing up on Finder

Hi
My HP Pocket Media Drive (USB), when plugged into my MacBook, does not show up on the Finder, even though it shows up on System Profiler. It only shows up on Disk Utility in certain occasions (such as after shutting down and starting up again). I have checked my Finder preferences, that external hard drives are shown on desktop.
I have tried resetting my PRAM and SMC too, but I still can't access the hard disk.
Any help will be appreciated.

Ian Sen wrote:
I get the following message in a window:
“connecting to server: resolving alias to… (my itunes folder on the external disk).”
On the chance that your Mac has a phantom folder in its Volumes folder, with that external drive not mounted, invoke the Finder menu option Go > Go to Folder. Enter "/Volumes" (without the quotes) in the field and click "Go". In the resulting window if you see anything with a name that resembles your external drive, trash it.
Anyone know how I can have the external hard disk automatically mount onto my desktop (and thereby bypass the need for several click-thru’s via the finder window)?
Once you're able to mount that external drive, open the Accounts panel of System Preferences and click on the lock in the corner to authenticate if needed. Select your account on the left, then the "Login Items" tab. Drag the mounted disk icon into the window then close System Preferences. That disk should now mount when you log in. A Finder window will open, but you can close that manually. If that bothers you sufficiently, if you search these discussion groups you may be able to find threads that discuss how to work around that.

External Hard disk cannot be detected by my MacBook Pro USB's

Hi
I have bought an external hard disk 2.5" and even though I have formatted it as FAT 32 still none of my 2 USB ports detect it. It is a hitachi drive 160 GB eSATA. I haven't use power with my external drive.
I ended up sharing it through a toshiba notebook I have for the kids running Windows XP and I transfer files though the Toshiba to the external drive. It's outrageous!!!
Any ideas?
thanks
Andreas

Hi Andreas,
OSX can recognize and use FAT32 partitions without additional help !
Your problem sounds to me as a power consumption problem of the external HD, meaning that the HD does need more power from the USB port than the MacBook Pro can deliver.
Best solution might indeed be to get the external HD on its own power supply.
Stefan

Menu bar items disappear, and external hard disks not mounting

Hi,
This problem started yesterday. I start up my Mac, and none of the menu bar items in the top-right of the screen show up. Then I noticed that none of my external hard disks had mounted.
Looking at the Activity Monitor, I saw that sustemuiserver was not running.
Reading around, I discovered that this usually follows a FrontRow hack (which I haven't installed). I tried deleting the ~/Library/preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist file and logging out and back in again. Everything seems to work again, for a while. However, the same thing happened this morning.
Has anyone else experienced this, and anyone know a fix to stop it from happening?
Thanks!
Tom

I've been having the same problem for a while (I believe since 10.5.3). I have reinstalled OSX, installed OSX 10.5.6 combo hoping that it would fix it, but nothing yet. I have the problem only when I insert an expresscard into the slot and restart. It connects to a PCI expansion chassis. When I restart with the ExpressCard installed, all menu items dissappear and I can't eject volumes (hard drives) from the desktop. If I restart without the ExpressCard in, the menu bars seem to work properly. I tried with an older G4 running 10.4.11, with a CardBus card and the same chassis, and that worked fine... all menu bar items displayed and worked properly and I could eject disks.
I have also tried creating new users, but that didn't work either.

External Hard Disks Not Mounting

I am having trouble with external hard disks appearing on my desktop.
Sometimes they appear, sometimes they don't. I have run Disk Utility when they do appear. No problems were found.
It seems to have started after I updated to iTunes 10.
Has anyone any suggestions?

No answer to your problem, I'm afraid, but I have been having similar problems but with CDs rather than external hard disks since I installed iTunes10-they appear greyed out in Finder.

Mac air with external hard drive - not being found on Finder, Time Machine, Migration Assistant

I have been using an external drive (Imation Apollo) to access only, old files from previous computer (PC) on a new Mac Air. I had not transferred them across to new computer (didn't want to do that) just accessing them from the HD. It had been working fine until recently. Each time the external drive had been connected Time Machine would come up and ask if i wanted to use this drive for back ups, and I always chose 'Decide later'. So, as yetI hadn't as yet configured Time Machine to do back ups.
Recently I noticed that the extrnal HD was no longer showing up on Finder. Slight panic as i have 5 or 6 yrs of work saved on that HD
Further investigations - it's also not showing up either on on Disk Utility, or on Migration Assistant.
I've done the following:
Tried HD in each of different USB ports - made no difference, HD still not showing up
Tested different Hubs in each port with HD attached - no difference HD not showing up
Tried USB flash drives in the USB ports - These are working fine and show up on finder
Tried the HD on other comptuters (a PC though, don't have access to another mac to do this test)- working fine, the HD is showing up and is accessable
Interrogated the Console logs to try to see if the act of attaching the HD creates a log entry - couldn't find anything
Rebooted computer via shut down, power disconnect - no difference
Reset PRAM - no difference still not showing up
Reset SMC - no differnce still not showing up
So I think I have established that all the USB ports are functioning correctly and able to access other external drive devices, using hubs with external powersource is not the issue, identified that the external hard drive is working OK, and it appears that the Mac itself is functioning normally.
What would be the reason the Mac now does not allow this specific external HD to be identified and accessed. The only possible things I can think of are
if I had in fact pressed 'Do not use' when Time Machine asked 'do you want to use this drive for back ups'. Would that mean that the Mac now totally rejects this HD from being a source of accessible files - I hope not!
I also think that my husband may have disconnected the hard drive from my computer to access some stuff and he just yanked it out rather than use the safe eject method. Could this create an issue? The Hard drive works fine on his PC.
Why is my Mac Air now rejecting this HD and what can I do to access my historical files now.
Any assistance anyone can provide would be very greatly appreciated!
Thanks
Anna

I can't answer why it isn't accessing it, but I have a slightly related issue w my back up drive starting to get noisy.
Realizing that redundancy is safety for critical data. I talked to my brother about my situation the other day & he said he has 3 small Western Digital portable HDs that he rotates for backup. He even keeps 1 in the safe deposit box.
I have read for some time that we should have multiple back ups & also have our critical stuff backed up off site. Amazon HD reviews had a woman telling about how she was very backed up on multiple computers & hard drives, but they were robbed or burgeled & all of them were stolen including her thesis that was on the computers.
Hard drives aren't that expensive. I just bought a new Western Digital 1 TB drive for $89.99. I plan to use it to back up the Seagate that is getting noisy & then maybe alternate them.
Also, when I came back to Mac, I moved practially all of my documents to Mac. I think I just dragged & dropped or something. Photos, Office, & pdfs do fine that way. & then you could back them up to a couple of different external drives & remove from your MacBookAir.
Unfortunately I think most of us do not back up until crisis & then it may be too late.
Also use Time Machine. For the 1st time in my computer life, my computer is well backed up--although now realizing the need for redundancy so will start backing up to at least 2 different HDs alternatly.
So, not sure why it isn't working & hopefully you have come up w a solution by now.
I think what I would do in a situation like this, since you can access it on the Windows machine would be to transfer the data to the Windows machine & then transfer it back to a different back up.
I'm looking into backing up what I still have in Windows using a thumb flash drive. I think it should all fit ok now that they have the larger drives & I don't have very much left in Windows format.

External hard disk not working

Hi, i have a hard disk that is connected via usb. It worked recently and still does on a PC but not accessible or even showing in iMac. Anybody know what i have to do to get it working again?

How is the disk formatted and has it ever worked on your iMac? I suspect it's formatted for the PC as NTFS which OS X will read but not write to. If you must share this disk with both your PC and Mac then you should first determine how it's formatted and if it can be shared. In the event it's formatted as most external HD's for NTFS then I'd recommend downloading and installing NTFS-3G will allow the Mac to write to it. You can find this at:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24481/ntfs-3g
If it's a simple matter of not being seen by the Mac then try resetting the SMC, don't be afraid to reset it 2-3x if the first time doesn't work.
SMC RESET
Shut down the computer.
Unplug the computer's power cord and all peripherals.
Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
Release the power button.
Attach the computers power cable.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.
PRAM RESET
Shut down the computer.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
Turn on the computer.
Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
Release the keys.

External Hard Drive Not Being Recognized By MacBook

My Toshiba external hard drive (1TB, brand new) does not show up anywhere on my MacBook Pro (Also brand new). The light on the external hard drive comes on so it's not a connection issue, like the cord being broken. But nothing happens when I plug it into my MacBook, aside from the light coming on. It doesn't pop up on the desktop or in disk utilities or finder. I don't have my old PC laptop any more, all my files from that computer are on this hard drive and all I want to do is transfer them to my MacBook. And even though I don't want to lose any of my files, I can't even erase anything on the external hard drive to reformat it because it's like...not talking to the MacBook...

Your Mac should be able to recognize many different types of drives (including Windows-formatted drives) immediately for Reading, provided they are in good working condition and not damaged. There should be no need to transfer to a different type of drive.
If there is no recognition of this drive, see if it can be seen in Disk Utility.
If your aim is to transfer the data on it DO NOT use ERASE or PARTITION as these will completely erase all the information on the Drive.
If the drive is present while the Mac sleeps, it is likely to drop out and not be seen any longer, especially if it is a USB-powered drive.

External hard drives not being recognized by Lr4

When I hooked up my two external hard drives to my computer this week, Lr4 is not recognizing them. Each folder has a question mark by it.
Appreciate any help..thanks!

Hi Jim,
I spent some time doing maintenance on Lil's computer. We were on public networks for 10 days and so I ran some cleanup software to help ensure that we don't have some virus or other malware messing things up.
Then I did some comparing and it appears that Lightroom has the G and H drives reversed.
I have enclosed 4 screen shots. Two show the strong(but not perfect) correlation between LR drive G and Explorer drive H........and vice versa. Another shows the K drive and the fourth shows the G drive one level up as you requested. I believe that when we disconnected this computer to take on vacation that we just pulled all the plugs and did NOT take any steps to "logically" disconnect them. If LR is sensitive to drives just being removed by pulling the cable, then perhaps that contributed to this situation...although I believe that we used the same procedure in the past.
Thanks,
David Polley

External Hard Drives not being recognized

I have 3 external hard drives. Had them for a long time now. I recently made only one change: I decided to start using the 'sleep' mode.
I noticed the sleep mode and external hard drives didn't get along real well, so I simply took the externals (used only for backing up data) and turned them off.
Its now been about 2 weeks, time to fire them back up and backup my data. Only one of the 3 is being recognized. The other two seem to come on, make the usual whiny noise and such, but aren't seen in the finder.
I've tried restarting my computer, turning off/on the hard drives, unplugging/replugging them from power, unplugging/replugging them into USB. I've verified connections, that kind of thing. Nada.
Any ideas on what to do to help my computer 'see' that they are there? this is a bit baffling to me and disconcerting, to say the least. I've never had problems with my computer recognizing the externals before.
Ideas are appreciated.
PowerMac G4 1.42 duel Mac OS X (10.4.6)

'sleep mode' ?
Do you mean the drives are triggered to not spin up for a period after powering on ? This is a feature designed for enormous banks of drives, so that when they are powered on, only a fraction spin up immediately, then another set, usually 12 seconds later, then another set, etc, until all are up to speed. This is reduce the power surge from spinning up 700 hard drives simultaneously in a commercial solution.

External Hard disk not being detected.

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