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.

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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 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?
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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.
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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 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.

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?
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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 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 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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Mother board of my laptop had to be replaced. meanwhile i had used hard disk from my laptop as external hard disk without formatting. After replacement of motherboard i have reconnected the same hard disk without formatting. but system does not boot up to operating system.

I have this issue before, in my case, its ribbon cable issue. dv9000 have two ribbon cables the one that have broken is the long one, (connect mobo to switch panel). However there is other possibility that the switch panel also broken.
Try buying the ribbon cable first, it is much cheaper compared to switch panel.
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Hi,
I'm new to this forum and I hope you guys can help me with this:
I've recently bought an external hard drive that works on Thunderbolt 2 (LaCie d2 3TB). When I connect the new drive to my Macbook Pro through the thunderbolt port, the drive isn't recognized. However, the drive works fine through a USB connection.
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Hi danielsh6,
I recently bought the new Lacie Thunderbolt 2 D2 3TB and I had the same problem as you, i have a macbook pro early 2011, those support thunderbolt but many times there is a bug that doesn't let you connect any thunderbolt drives to your computer. The solution I found was installing this update:
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External hard disk wouldnt work !!

Hello All,
I just bought a Toshiba external hard disk and my Mac doesnt read it. I receive this must every time. I've tried it on Windows and it works just fine. I'm using OS X 10.9.3 .
please help !!

It appears you used to have MacFUSE installed, and it is no longer functional.
Either take QuickTimeKirk's advice and reformat the drive to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)", exFAT, or FAT32.
Or find the latest version of FUSE for Mac and get that properly setup.

Upgraded to 10.10.3, the external hard disk keep working and spinning after I ejected successfully, and the HHD keep lights up, feel unsafe to unplug it

I tried on two macbook air, same situation.
This never happen on 10.10.2 or previous version. (The HDD light will off and it will stop running after I ejected before.)
I feel unsafe to unplug the external hard disk when its still light up and running.
I am using Macbook book air 2012 and 2013 with seagate backup plus....
Anyone have same problem? how to fix it?
or its ok to unplug the HDD while the HDD light is still on and running?
MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

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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.

Time Machine Restore from Networked external hard drive - not working??

recap: hard drive failure on iMac. Took it to Genius folks, they installed a new hard drive with updated Leopard OSx on it.
I came home turned it on, selected "restore from time machine" feature. It finds my external hard drive (which is connected to an airport extreme via USB 2.0) My computer is connected via ethernet to the airport extreme.
I select the imac backup and up pops the login screen. I log in. Then I get the "Checking Time Machine Backup...." And it just keeps checking and checking. The external hard drive is making all sorts of noises, like it is working away, but it just keeps checking. Also have the spinning beach ball....
How long does this go on before we get on with it?

LOL.. didn't see your answer until now. I feel pretty good as I did exactly what you recommended. Thanks so much for taking the time to respond. I appreciate it.
Here's the rundown on what I did.
LOL. I see y'all didn't know what to do either!!
Well after puzzling for a bit I finally aborted the process. I tried connecting my hard drive directly to the computer - but then it would not recognize the backup on the external drive.
So finally, I rebooted using the install disk and selected utilities and restore and voila, we were in business.
Restore said it would take 16 hours and went to bed - 11am. Got up at 5 and it was complete (guess it really didn't take that long) So far, everything looks great!!!!!
Hope this helps someone out there.

External Hard drive not working

I just bought a 1 TB G Drive. Did so because my 2008 Macbook became very slow and wanted to back up all my data. I first tried doing so through disk utility and I thought it backed it up but when I checked nothing was there. Then went through time machine and it said it wouldn't back up because of a specific file. When I went back into disk utility I tried backing up through there again and it said it had an error with connection or something (but I thought that was because my computer went into sleep mode). Then I went back into time machine and it didn't recognize my external hard drive - so I went back into disk utility and it didn't show up on there either.
I am so confused. I was told my an apple employee how to back it up, I followed their instructions which weren't rocket science and it just doesn't make sense to me. Why is it so difficult having my computer backed up?
I read when time machine says there's a unreadable file that could mean something bad. But I'm more concerned with my HD not even being seen by my computer as before I could at least copy and paste files into HD.
I'm not mac savy and don't understand computer tech lingo.

Hi ,
welcome to HP support forums
i wish you to enjoy your time here
please ,
give me more info about your external HDD brand so i can search for more info about it and find out if it needs a specific driver
also , i want you to check your USB port you use
using another port may help , it can be only a problem with the USB port itself or the Driver
anothrt hard TIP : (Use it if you are good with SW problems only)
1.Use Ubuntu Live Disc without installing
2.connect the external HDD and wait till ubuntu discover it
3.now try copying anything t the HDD
now you will face two situations :
1. the copying process will work fine with no errors and now you know it was only a problem with the OS you are using (WIN 7)
2. the copying process won't complete and now there is also two possible things
the first is the USB port or the USB cable you are using >> try replacing it and change the port and repeat
the secong is that the new HDD has a problem or a Bad firmware maybe >> your old HDD has no relation with the problem now as Ubuntu starts in Live mode without using the internal HDD it starts depends on the CD itself and your Ram
Hope this to help you
don't hesitate to Ask again
Please mark my post as SOLVED if it has resolved your problem. It helps others with similar situations.
Mark Th. Antonio
Faculty Of Engineering Alexandria University

External hard disk not working

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