External hard drive not accessible, but visible in Disk Utility

Hello All,
I recently did a clean install on my iMac, and I cannot access my external hard drive through Finder. The system does detect the hard drive in Disk Utiliy, however Finder cannot see it. I also tried About this Mac > More info > Storage and it does not show up there. I checked my Finder settings per other threads and Finder is set to show all HD's.
The Disk Utility allows me to "Eject" the drive without any problems, but I cannot access anything on it.
When I plug this in Windows, I hear the Windows USB chime. I do not think that the HD went bad because it has not worked since I did a clean install on my iMac, and of course, all my documents are backed up to this drive.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.

There is recovery software such as FileSalvage which may be able to find something.
http://subrosasoft.com/software/filesalvage
You can download a demo copy which will tell you what it will recover if that appears worth while you must pay for to recover the files.
You are going to need another disk for FileSalvage to recover the files. If should be at least as large as the disk being recovered.
Allan

Similar Messages

External hard drive not recognized in Finder or Disk Utility

Two weeks ago, my 2007 black Macbook stopped recognizing the hard drive. I was told by some IT friends that the controller had likely failed and I needed to purchase a new laptop. I removed the hard drive and placed it into an enclosure (turning it into an external hard drive) and hooked it up to a new Macbook Pro which I purchased a couple days ago. The external hard drive did not show up in Finder or Disk Utility but the light on the enclosure was on and it was making a very soft whirring noise and got warm after a few minutes. I usually backed up the hard drive but, of course, hadn't done it in a couple of weeks before it died so everything I worked on in that time is lost to me at the moment. I'm trying to avoid paying tons of money for a data recovery service so any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

That whirring noise might be due to physical damage on the disk. I know data recovery services are costly but that remains only the solution for damaged HDD. You can get latest quotes on services from different dealers. Proceed only when your data is very important to be recovered.

External hard drive not showing in finder or disk utility

1TB WD external hard drive is not showing in finder sidebar, destop, or disk utility. I have checked and all the preferences are ticked. The disk itself is showing a light and making a whirring sound during start up after being plugged into the power.

Three different external drives, on 2 different MacBook Pros (different ages). One drive with internal power, 2 through USB. Also have a new Solid State External Drive and it does work. The were all working before upgrade to Yosemite.
Have tried multiple USB Cords

External hard drive suddenly became "unreadable" and the disk utility offers not repair options. The drive is visible in disk utility but may not be mounted... any suggestions?

I have a WD My Passport 070A Media 2.0 TB external hard drive that has suddenly become unreadable on my laptop (MacBook Pro circa 2006 with 10.4.11) and I have tried on a MacBook Pro 2011 running 10.6.8 with the same results. I had tried opening disk utility to repair the drive, but on both machines the drive is visible in the left column, with no indentation below the drive. When I select the drive in the first aid portion the only options highlighted are info and eject... I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions to repair the drive. I am currently in Belize and am not home for 3 weeks yet. I'm hoping for a fix while I am down here, otherwise I may have to wait... I appreciate any assistance!
-Christina

Hi Christina,
It's quite possible the AC PSU has given out, if It's only Bus powered as it appears, that's the worst idea ever & asking for eventual problems.
What Format is it?
Did you install any WD SW?
Your best bet is DiskWarrio...
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/
But others that may work…
Drive Genius…
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius.php
TechTool Pro…
http://www.micromat.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=83

1 TB External WD Drive Not Showing Up In Finder/Disk Utility/Terminal

Hey everyone,
First time posting here so forgive any mistakes. I recently purchased a Late 2013 Macbook Pro Retina, 15-inch, 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7 from Apple. Previously, I had the late 2007 Macbook Pro model until a friend spilled some water on it and corrupted the motherboard. Regardless, I was using a Western Digital 1 TB external hard-drive to keep all my documents and files backed up, manually, alongside the time machine feature built in. (This was not connected at the time of the spill, and was not thereafter, so rule out water damage) During the period between when the old one died, (earlier this year May-2013), I kept the drive safely in storage because I knew I would want to transfer my 100gb music librairy along with my photos and other files when I finally got the new one later that year (was waiting for the hardwell processors to come out for the MBP). Just recently after this purchase I tried to connect the drive to my new MacBook Pro but it was not showing up. I have scowered the online forums for trouble shooting tips and took all the steps to no avail. I have replaced the data-drive cable with a new one, connected it to the wall outlet in case it wasn't drawing enough power from the laptop, among a few other simple tricks, but still it would not show up in either Disk Utility or the terminal command to show all active drives, all that's there is the internal Macintosh HD one. It was a fairly quiet drive-however I do notice there is not much of a 'spin-up' noise or any sound of it begining to work when turned on or plugged in, so I'm worried there might be something wrong with the drive itself. Nonetheless, the power signal continues to flash but still no recognition from the computer that it's there, so I'm certain it's not reading it. I have tried on my other buddys Mac and it is the same situation, as well as my roommates PC (which I figured wouldnt anyway because of how its formatted, but it was worth a shot) I am not sure which avenue to take next as I have all my files and college work that I still need access to on the drive, and would really hate to have to format the drive or anything drastic as such. Possibly there is a part I can buy and replace myself to make it start up and spin again, but I am not sure what that part could be or if there is an easier solution out there.
I would greatly appreciate any information or help on this problem, thank you all for the time and advie.

Clicking from a hard drive is bad. Does the external drive have an external power supply? If it does I would use this supply.

External hard drive not showing but flash drive is.

Please note this is windows 8.1 pro.
Nothing is recognised for 2 usb hard drives I have (working fine on another windows 8.1 laptop) in both usb slots. They show nothing in disk management or List Disk in command prompt. I have updated all extra drivers and software via HP support assistant, including updates for windows itself.
USB memory stick is recognised in both slots so they are working.
I have tried uninstalling the usb root hub, restarting, but nothing changes.
Any other thoughts?

Hello @tim_m99
Thank you for posting on the HP Forums.
To get your issue more exposure I would suggest posting it in the commercial forums since the Elitebook Revolve 810 G2 is a commercial product. You can do this here: Notebook - HP ProBook, EliteBook, Compaq, Slate/Tablet PC, Armada, LTE
The support page for your product may be helpful in the meantime: HP EliteBook Revolve 810 G2 Tablet
I hope this helps!
Malygris1
I work on behalf of HP
Please click Accept as Solution if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.
Click Kudos Thumbs Up on the right to say “Thanks” for helping!

External hard drive not accessible in media browser!

It's not a RAID or anything out of the ordinary. Just a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) drive. Media browser will not let me click on the drive to see the media and it doesn't actually show up under Local Drive. I have permission to read and write to the drive. Help please, it's getting maddening!

Is that a Case sensitive hard drive?
http://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/error-case-sensitive-drives-supported.html
And, Yosemite sometimes has problems, often related to "default" permissions needing to be changed
-one person's solution https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1689788

Hard Drive not properly showing up in Disk Utility or Finder

Hi there,
So I have a new 2 tb external western digital hard drive and i think at one point it was not ejected properly. Now it no longer mounts on the desktop/finder and when it shows up in Disk Utility, the information is incorrect. In other words, it shows up as a 4gb hard drive that is unformatted, without partitions, etc. This hard drive has info on it and three partitions.
Also, Disk Utility won't allow me to mount it, verify or repair anything.
Thoughts?

it actually just says Generic External Media and there is just one line showing it (no subfolder or anything like that.

Hard drive not identified during Installation. Disk Utility showing nothing in left side bar

Some day before my Macbook pro shown the flashing question mark. I have tried to install thr OS Snow leopard using disc.
When I started to install the OS, my start up disc ( Hard drive) is not showing for installation.
I have gone through the Disk Utility to repair it, but in that Hard drive is not showing in left side bar.
Kindly suggest how can I recover my Hard drive to install the OS?

That suggests that the drive is dead; if so, it needs to be replaced, and any data on it can only be recovered by a professional service, which can charge hundreds or thousands of dollars.
(101654)

External Firewire Drives not mounting but shown in Disk utlilty

Well the title says it all!
I can see my ibook in target mode on my new macbook in disk utlity but not in finder!
I want to copy over my documents folders (I have tried migration assistant but it can't see the mounted drive either!).
It works fine the other way (i.e viewing the macbook in target mode on the ibook)
Details:
Macbook 2.2GHz (new model) 10.5.1
Help!

Is the Mount or Unmount button greyed out in DU when you highlight the Firewire icon? If you can click the Mount one, do so. If you can click the Unmount one, check the Prefs in the Finder menu to make sure that you are showing attached drives.

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 drive not showing up in finder

Hi,
I have a LaCie Rikiki USB 3.0 1TB external hard drive for more than a year or so (probably longer than that). The hard drive has 2 partitions with one formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) <named MAC> and the other MS-DOS (FAT) for windows <named as FOR WIN>.
The MAC volume has been working fine yesterday then suddenly it just started to transfer files very slowly and had problems unmounting when I am done transferring files saying it is in used by an application when it is not. So I had to force eject the the MAC volume while the FOR WIN volume ejected fine. However, here comes the problem.
Once I reconnected the external hard drive, it does show up in disk utility but not in finder. Also, the FOR WIN volume showed up as disk1s2 in disk utility. I tried using disk utility's verify and repair disk and couldn't fix the FOR WIN volume so I gave up on that since I don't have any important files in that volume. On the other hand, I could run verify and repair to get the MAC volume mounted. Through that I could get some files copied but soon finder hangs on me and wouldn't open even after relaunch which led me to disconnect the drive by just unplugging the USB. Now when I connect the drive, it again shows up in disk utility but not mounted and when I try to use the verify and repair all I get is:
Verifying Volume "MAC"
checking file system
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
Verify and Repair volume "MAC"
Checking file system
Volume repair complete
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required
and it's stuck at "updating boot support........" I've let it ran for like 6 hours and it's still at that stage. Had enough, closed disk utility and reconnected the harddrive and it's still the same showing up in disk utility but not mounting.
Could anyone please help? Thank you!

tonydenson wrote:
That's great thanks. cmd-shift-c brings it back.
then it should also show up on the desktop. go to finder preferences->general and check the boxes to show external and CD drives.
Incidentally, I now have the opposite problem, I can't eject it. I get the message that the disk is in use, try quitting applications. I quite often get this with mounted drives or flash drives. Is there any way of finding out which particular application has a given device open ?
sometimes spotlight keeps drives busy.
you can see what's doing it by running the following terminal command
sudo lsof /volumes/lacie

External Hard Drive/Not Showing Up on Desktop

I have a G4, running OS X 10.2.8 and recently my kids deleted some important data. So--we bought an external hard drive (WD MyBook 160 GB Essential Edition, which says on the box that it runs 10.2.8 and higher).
We took the external hard drive and the computer to a reputable repair place, the guy there took the hard drive out and using a G6 system, restored what he could to the external hard drive.
We bring it home, plug it in, and the computer is not reading the new external hard drive. I did check in disk utility, and it shows up as a greyed out item on the disk utility.
The external hard drive does show up when hooked up to my husband's office PC.
Any ideas as to why this is happening and how to correct it?
Thanks, Ruth

OK, I figured it out (in case anyone else needs to know) with this information from the Western Digital site:
Macintosh Operating System 10.3.x or earlier will only recognize FAT32 partitions that are smaller than 128-gigabytes. Multiple FAT32 partitions smaller than 128-gigabytes will need to be created in order for Macintosh Operating System 10.3.x or earlier to recognize the partitions. You will need to use a Windows based computer to create FAT32 partitions, as Macintosh does not have the ability to create them.
Macintosh Operating System 10.4.x or later can recognize FAT32 partitions over 128-gigabytes.

I bought a new external hard drive for backups, but time machine won't do a full back up. I think it is remembering backing up onto previous external hard drives, which I don't own anymore. How do I do a new full backup?

I bought a new external hard drive for backups, but time machine won't do a full back up.
I think it is remembering backing up onto previous external hard drives, which I don't own anymore. How do I do a new full backup?
When I bought the new (used) iMac, I also bought an external hard drive for backups. It worked fine, but my husband stole it.
Then I bought a new external hard drive (Seagate) and it worked fine for three weeks, then died.
So I just got a new external hard drive, which was put together from an internal hard drive and a hard drive enclosure.
Time machine did the first backup today, and it should have taken 9 hours like it did on the previous first time full back up. Instead, it took 30 minutes. That can't be right. I want to start over and do a full backup to make sure everything gets onto my new external hard drive, but I can't figure out how to do that. Please help.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below to select it:
tmutil compare -E
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).
The command will take at least a few minutes to run. Eventually some lines of output will appear below what you entered.
Each line that begins with a plus sign (“+”) represents a file that has been added to the source volume since the last snapshot was taken. These files have not been backed up yet.
Each line that begins with an exclamation point (“!”) represents a file that has changed on the source volume. These files have been backed up, but not in their present state.
Each line that begins with a minus sign (“-“) represents a file that has been removed from the source volume.
At the end of the output, you’ll get some lines like the following:
Added:
Removed:
Changed:
These lines show the total amount of data added, removed, or changed on the source(s) since the last snapshot.

External hard drive not mounting

external hard drive not mounting

I fixed mine by uninstalling the software that came with the harddrive such as Tuxera and reinstalled it now myharddrive works again and i did not have to delete the harddrive and reformat it.
I tried a lot like reseting the Pram And connecting other harddrives but by unstalling the original software it works all over again. I hope this works for you because i was getting pretty frustrated myself.
Im running a 2012 macbook pro with 10.9.3
boom mind blown

External hard drive not accessible, but visible in Disk Utility

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for