External hard drive failure. please help

I am on tiger 10.4.10 and my external 500 gb buffalo hard drive is NOT mounting in os x. When I go to disk utility it tells me I have no files. I verify disk says its ok.
what can I do to get my files back?

Which computer? If the HD is FireWire, see http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88338
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20041221081432908

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My PC computer was wiped (virus) including itunes. How do I transfer the many playlists and music to the new re-installed itunes?? Ipod is synced to old itunes. I have all original music files on external hard drive. Please help?

My PC computer was wiped (virus) including itunes. How do I transfer the many playlists and music on my ipod to the new re-installed itunes?? Ipod is synced to old itunes. I have all original music files on external hard drive. Please help?
New itunes is trying to wipe the ipod. But have many many playlists (many hours making) which I want to save. Any help would be appreciated.

If you want to just extract the playlists from your iPod, plug it in iTunes. When it appears under devices, right->click on it and choose Export Playlists. Save them to a location such as your desktop and them import them into your library once you have copied and imported all of your music back into it.
See this older post from another forum member Zevoneer covering the different methods and software available to assist you with the task of copying content from your iPod back to your PC and into iTunes.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2452022?start=0&tstart=0
B-rock

Possible Hard Drive Failure - Please Help

Hello everyone.
I have a 24" Aluminum iMac (Mid 2007 model, I believe) that was purchased around November 2007. The internal hard drive is 500 GB (roughly 300 GB for OS X and 200 GB for Windows XP). My problem is that my iMac doesn't want to boot into OS X. Please note that I can still access my Windows XP partition by holding the option when the computer starts up.
Here's a list of the things I've tried so far:
-Calling the support number: The gentleman took me through some basic trouble shooting steps (including booting in Single User Mode and typing the fsck command) but couldn't resolve the issue, so he gave me a case number and made an appointment at a local Apple store which I could not attend. I have yet to reschedule another appointment.
-Booted the "sick" Mac in Target Disk Mode while connecting it to another "savior" Mac via FireWire: Nothing. The target Mac goes into TDM correctly (FireWire logo bounces around screen), but the savior Mac did not recognize it. (The drive didn't mount?) This was the case with two different savior Macs.
-Booted in Verbose Mode: I held down Command+V while booting the computer. The trouble seems to arise directly after the line "AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement: Intialization complete". The next step results in an error reading "disk0s2: I/O error.", then the computer shuts down after about 45 seconds.
-Inserted "Mac OS X Install Disc 1": I held down option and selected to boot from the CD. I chose English as the main language. When the welcome screen pops up (to re-install Leopard), I instead chose to run the Disk Utility option from the menu bar. I see my hard drive (465.8 GB) which is split into two partitions ("Macintosh HD" which I assume is disk0s2, and "disk0s3" which I assume is my Windows XP partition). I attempt to verify disk permissions on "Macintosh HD" but it almost immediately bumps back with an error saying "First Aid failed. Disk Utility stopped verifying permissions on 'Macintosh HD' because the following error was encountered: The underlying task reported failure on exit." Next, I click on Verify Disk instead of Verify Disk Permissions. The errors in the details list (red colored text?) include "Incorrect number of thread counts", "Invalid node structure", "Volume check failed", and "Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed."
-Tried to make an image of my current disk onto an external HD connected through FireWire: I thought this looked bad, so I figured I could re-install Leopard entirely. However, I have years of data on this hard drive that are irreplaceable (my fault for not backing it up to begin with). I hooked up a brand new 1 TB external drive via FireWire800. In Disk Utility, I can see the 1 TB external alongside my 500 GB internal. I clicked on the "Macintosh HD" disk and clicked "New Image" and directed it to create an image of my internal drive on my external drive. I click Save. After about five seconds, it bounces back with an error reading "Unable to create 'Macintosh HD.dmg'. (Input/output error)".
Questions:
1. What the heck happened? Is the problem the result of a head crash? Is it a problem in the boot sector?
2. Is there any possible way to recover the data on the hard drive?
3. Does a failure like this get covered by Apple Care Protection Plans? (the computer is covered, by the way)
Thank you very very much in advance. Sorry for the huge amount of text. :-x
Message was edited by: UnderTheMud
Message was edited by: UnderTheMud

Buy Disk Warrior and use it to repair your OS X volume (if it's repairable.) If DW cannot repair the volume then use Disk Utility to reformat the volume using the Zero Data (one pass) Security option.
Do you have a backup of your OS X volume? Since you have tried using TDM to access the drive without success it's reasonable to assume your data may be lost. If you have an external hard drive you can use, then you could attempt to use file recovery software to see if your data are recoverable.
At this point it is premature to assume the drive is bad since your Windows volume is functional. If you have Windows software for reading Mac drives you may try accessing the OS X volume from Windows.
Basics of File Recovery
General File Recovery
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten with recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive.
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.

HT5958 We are 4 min in to editing a video on final cut pro. now my computer is freezing up. I have heard that this is a glitch from downloading. (beyond frustrated) is this from working from 2 external hard drives? PLEASE HELP! =)

PLEASE HELP. =)
we are about 4 minutes into editing a video for the first time on final cut pro x 10.1. everything was going very smoothly, but then it started freezing up. I had to do a hard reset and took it into the computer store that actually installed final cut for us. they suggested that our mac actually is not capable of keeping up with final cut. (I FIND THIS HARD TO BELIEVE!!) We work on an IMAC 2.66 ghz intel core 2 duo. 8 gb 1067 mhz ddr3. software os x 10.9.1 (hopefully that info will help for your suggestions) Because we have soooooooooooo many hours of high def video, we are working off of two external hard drives.... is this a problem?? or do we really need to upgrade our computer?????

Like Russ said, check Activity Monitor and see what else is running and turn off any Applications that aren't needed.
Turn off wi-fi or disconnect the wire that goes to the Internet
Turn off Background Rendering (if you see an orange line on the top of the time line that moves along and gets shorter while you're not doing anything that is a good sign that Background Rendering is running.
I haven't used 10.1 yest but on the previous version there was a small circle approximately in the middle of the screen, about 1/2-inch or 1 cm in diameter, and it would have a number inside. The number is the percent complete of what is hapening. When it is Rendering the percentage will be shown.
Basically, you probably need to free up resources.
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I have updated my software on my Mac to OS X v 10.9.5 and now my mac doesnt read any external hard drives? please help

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I have no idea where to change that
Finder/Preferences/Sidebar and General for the Desktop.
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Assuming your music is in iTunes, this Apple note should explain it.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748

How do I move my iTunes Music to an external hard drive? Please help!

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Thanks!
Paula

This article tells you the proper way to move your music:
iTunes: Moving your iTunes Music folder
After a successful move, always connect your external disk, before running iTunes.
Failing to do so will iTunes cause to reset the 'iTunes Music folder location'.
That means your next ripped CDs will be stored on your internal disk.
If that happens, just set the proper location again in the preferences.
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M
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My MacBook won't boot to Ubuntu on my external hard drive. Please help!

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Luckily I had backed up my home drive and was able to restore it using backup.
Now this is where my problems start.
My home drive is not the same name ( I think - I can'r remember too well what it was called previously )
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Sometime it loads up, sometime it just doesn;t get recognised, and I can put the USB connection in and out 10 times before it mounts.
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External hard drive problem, please help!

I have a SEAGATE external hard drive which I had associated with Time machine so its file system was HFS+ journaled.
when i turn the hdd on a window pop up comes on the screen telling me to either initialize, ignore or eject.
if i go to disk utility the hard disk shows as disk1s2 and that its format is FAT32.
trying to repairing it/fixing through Disk utility gives me the following error
Verifying volume “disk1s2”
** /dev/disk1s2
Invalid BS_jmpBoot in boot block: 000000
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.
however if i go to terminal and type fsck -f -y /dev/disk1s2
after a few fixes the following output was given
Andrew:~ Andrew$ fsck_hfs -f -d -y /dev/disk1s2
** /dev/rdisk1s2
Using cacheBlockSize=32K cacheTotalBlock=1024 cacheSize=32768K.
Journal replayed successfully or journal was empty
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
** Detected a case-sensitive catalog.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
** Checking multi-linked files.
** Checking Catalog hierarchy.
** Checking Extended Attributes file.
** Checking multi-linked directories.
privdir_valence=13289, calc_dirlinks=35218, calc_dirinode=13289
** Checking volume bitmap.
** Checking volume information.
** The volume Everything appears to be OK.
so here it recognises its name and everything.
what's wrong?
Thanks!

amarkitanis wrote:
when i turn the hdd on a window pop up comes on the screen telling me to either initialize, ignore or eject.
If you don't have any data on the drive, you may want to initialize the disk. Otherwise I would check out DiskWarrior.
Cole

My internal hard drive isn't being recognized on my macbook pro but when I put the HD in my Mac Pro (desktop), the desktop computer recognizes the HD. When I insert the installer CD on my laptop, it also doesn't recognize my hard drive. Please help!

My internal hard drive isn't being recognized on my macbook pro but when I put the HD in my Mac Pro (desktop), the desktop computer recognizes the HD. When I insert the installer CD on my laptop, it also doesn't recognize my hard drive. Please help! Thank you!
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Depending on which email client software you use
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Since you don't specify what mail application,
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I notice there are some items to the right of your post
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My hard disk crashed and I cannot find out how to "contact customer service" other than this forum. The website seems to just take me in a circle. I need to de-activate a license but cannot access the software due to a crashed hard drive. Please help.

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My whole catalogue was nearly lost due to a failed external hard drive. Professional help recovered photos but I can't find my smart tags. Is it possible they were lost on failed drive?

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External hard drive failure. please help

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