External hard drive not found

I finally ventured into OS X territory. Before doing so, I backed up (drag and drop) everything onto a mobile 80 GB USB Western Digital hard drive. The backup was a success, and installing OS 10.0.4 went fine, but I cannot locate the hard drive. When the USB is plugged in upon startup, nothing comes up. If I plug it in after starting up, it says something like "OS X does not recognize some of the files ..." and gives me the option to continue or initialize with Disk First Aid. I didn't want to initialze because I thought that would erase everything. I read in some of the other posts that 10.0.4 isn't worth much and I plan on going up to at least 10.2 within the week. Is this a 10.0.4 issue that could be resolved by upgrading?

Hi Kat,
I went to disk utility, and my drive is listed under devices, but is not highlighted, so I cannot click on it.
I am wondering if it has something to do with the new system update
Possibly. Can you boot from an earlier install disk?
If the drive is spinning up and can't be selected I've had good luck retrieving files with Data Rescue II. It's free to demo and you can download 5 MB for free.
Richard

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External hard drive not found on macbook pro

I have a lacie 2tb external hard drive.. It started disconnecting itself randomly. I purchased a new cable for it. The problem stopped for a short time.. then it started up, and now the hard drive won't appear on my macbook pro. Ive tried disk utility initially it was there.. but now its no where to be found. the people at lacie seem to think the drive has failed.. Any ideas?

Hard drives can fail at any time... but, as I said, it could be that the SATA controller in the enclosure has gone belly-up. You should be able to take the drive to a standard computer repair shop and see if they can remove the drive from the enclosure, put it in a dock and see if the drive is mountable. It's a 50/50 chance but it shouldn't cost much and should be the first step before taking the unit into a more expensive data recovery facility.
Good luck,
Clinton
BTW: My LaCie drives have 3 year and 5 year warranties, respectively - you may want to see if yours qualifies.

External hard drive not found in mavericks. help

Hi
I have a macbook air (mid 2012) running the latest version of OS X Mavericks. I had to repair my flash storage in an Apple Retail Store to get MAvericks installed. Ever since I've had Mavericks, my two 1TB usb 3 external hard drives (one is samsung, one is toshiba) are not showing up in Finder or on the Desktop.
They showed up and worked fine in Mountain Lion but they haven't worked ever since the upgrade. I've verifyed and tried to mount the disks in disk utility but it says they can't be mounted. Anybody else had this problem and how to fix it?
I can't really repair or rease them because they are full and I don't have a backup for them.

In finder preferences you can hide or show the mounted disks on the desktop, is that what you need?
What error shows when you try to mount them?

External Hard Drive Not Found in Finder

I have an Oxford 120gb external hard drive that I am using with my PPC iMac G5. It is connected via firewire. My computer is not showing the drive on my desktop like it normally does. I have tried using a different firewire cord, using a different firewire port, etc. After booting up the drive, System Profiler indicates that the drive is there. It gives me all the information about the drive. What could be causing this, and are there any possible solutions? It's freaking me out, because I haven't backed up our digital photos in probably 5 months or so! Any help is GREATLY appreciated!
PS - I've tried restarting the drive and the computer/connectng the cord in every combination I can think of, still to no avail!

The good news is that I think I'm narrowing down what my problem is. The bad news is that I've got a huge video project due next Sunday and I'm not able to transfer video from my Canon GL2 video camera to my computer!
I am now putting it together that neither firewire port is working. The reason I say this is because I've tried my external HD in both ports, using two different firewire cords. AND I have tried capturing video to my computer using two different video cameras, and on both firewire ports.
I've trashed the old quicktime receipts and installed the newest version. I'm on OSX 10.4.9. I've also done the "turn everything off, unplug everything, drink a guinness (or two), sit for 30 minutes, plug it back in, plug the power cord back in while simultaneously holding down the power button, then hitting the power button". Still nothing but the good old "maximum Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec!"
Here's what is odd. After trying the Guinness method once, it worked. So I was finally able to start capturing video. While capturing, I hit a break in the sequence, and this somehow kicked me back off the firewire port.
My external drive is showing up in Disk Utility, and will now usually show up in system profiler, but only in profiler if the camera is not also plugged in the firewire.
ALL that to say, even if this is something that can be fixed by Mac's repair program, I'm still screwed on my project. Any other ways I could at least get the video from my GL2 onto my computer? In crisis mode...
Also, are there any details available online on how to open up an iMac to reset the SMU? Or perhaps a PRAM reset? I've never "been inside", but am more than willing to try if I had a proper walkthrough on how to do it (what to look for, etc.). I know the link in the response above talks about how to do it from outside of the Mac, but I've also heard talk of opening the case and looking for the logic board...

External hard drive not found anymore after wrong disconnection?

First time there was no problem and used external hd. After disconnecting the wrong way the mac can't recognise the exteranl HD anymore.
On my other pc it works fine. What happend and how to restore?
Dirk

have you shut down or restarted your computer since last you pulled out the hard drive?
are you connecting it via firewire or usb
go into disk utility when you have your HD plugged in and you will see it there, right click it and hit mount. it should come up.
if you are using firewire, or usb, you might want to not just pull them out without first ejecting it. I've heard, specifically with firewire, that this could fry your whole logic board.

External hard drive not found when holding option key at startup

So here's the deal. My MacBooks DVD drive crappedmout. I opened up to check that the drive was hooked up correctly and all. Looked fine so I put it all back together and tuned on the Mac. My hard drive wasn't recognized so I Got the ? Flashing folder so I plugged in my external USB to run the disc utility and restore the hard drive (I have the startup discs on there as my dvdrom won't read anymore). Turned it on, held down option (with external plugged in and on) and the mouse came up to select what I wanted to boot from, but nothing showed up. I can't see the device at all. Keyboard seems to be working fine as well as the track pad. I also plugged in a USB mouse to check my USB ports and the mouse worked fine. Would love any help on this. Need the computer salvaged (hopefully) since I don't have the money to get a new one at current. Thanks for the help! (ps on an I touch if there are misspellings.)

Apparently, you unhooked something or other. Open it up again and check at the computing hardware forums for you machine. If still no go, then it's time to visit a repair station.

External Hard-drive - not found in Finder/Desktop

I've got a 1TB Toshiba hard-drive. When I connect it to my laptop, I can't find it in Finder or on the Desktop. I can find it in Disk Utility though, and it lights up and sounds like normal (that really really soft whirrring sound)
Any ideas what is happening? And how I can fix it?
I've got a lot on it that I don't want to lose...
Cheers!

Your Finder Preferences may need to be modified.
Was this HDD used with your Mac previously or with a PC? If the latter, then the format needs to be addressed. If you reformat it for Mac or a common format for both Mac and PC, all user data will be erased. You may have to copy the data to another HDD or use an application such as Paragon:
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/
Ciao.

External hard drive not recognized... help please.

okay, well here is the story:
my iBook G4 had its stock 30gb hard drive in it and it was running extremely low on space. so i figured i didn't want to carry around an external hard drive, therefore i would buy an internal hard drive an install it. so i purchased a new 2.5" 80gb hard drive and called up the local apple store. they told me that although it was under warranty, that it did not cover hard drive installation. so i looked it up online and found step by step instructions to install the hard drive. so after lots of hard work and many screws, i installed the new hard drive successfully... but i still had this perfect 30gb hard drive. i thought maybe to save a few bucks i could turn it into a usb external hard drive. i found an enclosure for the hard drive and a usb 2.0 cable and plugged it into my ibook. it was recognized and everything. i put some files on the external hard drive and transferred it to another mac. this is where the trouble started. i plugged the hard drive into a PowerMac G4, and it was not recognized... so i tried it on a different mac. this time on a PowerBook G4, but no luck. this issue has been troubling me for a few weeks. but then i tried it on a similar iBook G4... and it was recognized. but i don't know why it was only recognized only on the iBook G4 (not the same iBook G4 it was pulled out of) and no other macs.
does anybody have any ideas what we can do to get this hard drive to be recognized by other macs?
any of even the smallest ideas would be greatly appreciated.
thanks,
tyler
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

I can walk you through formatting the hard drive:
1. Hook it up to an iBook that recognizes it.
2. Go into your Applications folder, then scroll down to Utilities. Open Utilities and scroll down a bit and you should see Disk Utility. Double-click.
3. On the left side you should see your internal hard drive and your external one. Each hard drive will have a sub-catagory with the partition indented.
4. Your external hard drive will probably be the second catagory. Click it.
5. In the center-top you should see the tabs First Aid, Erase, Partition, RAID, and Restore. Click the Erase tab.
6. You should see Volume Format: and then a drop down menu, and Name: and a text box. Type in the name you want the external hard drive to be named.
7. In the drop down menu, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
8. Then, simply click Erase, watch the progress and it should be good to go!!
Hope I helped you out. Oh, and it might be the enclosure...and also what OS's? Since it's USB it is probably using a USB Mass Storage driver. Mac-wise, if formatting doesn't help, I would get a FireWire enclosure because FireWire is much faster than just USB 2.0. Oh, thats nother thing...Is the enclosure Hi-Speed USB? If it isn't, I would definitely get a FireWire one...If it is, the PowerMac G4 doesn't have Hi-Speed so you're not taking full advantage..Just some insight
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3) 512 MB Ram, CD-RW Combo Drive, 40 Gig HD, bought in October of 2005...
Message was edited by: Hilary_Rose

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

I am planning on using my time capsule as a network and essentially an external hard drive - not just back up, is this ok?

I am planning on using my time capsule as a network and essentially an external hard drive - not just back up, is this ok?

Most users should use the Time Capsule for backups. This assumes that "original" copies of your data are on the computer and backups of this data are stored on the Time Capsule.
If either the Time Capsule or the hard drive on your computer fails, there are at least copies of your important data on the other drive.
If you are asking if you can place "original" files on the Time Capsule, do you have a plan to backup those files?
If the Time Capsule drive has a problem....and your only copy of your important data is on the Time Capsule....you will lose everything.
If you are asking if this is OK, the answer for most folks would be "no".
Can you clarify if this is what you are asking?

Why is my External Hard Drive not showing in Aperture 3.6 Import?

Why is my External Hard Drive not showing in Aperture 3.6 Import?
Only my computer hard drive is and I want to import from an external drive. I have always been able to until I updated to Aperture 3.6 and Yosemite.

Only my computer hard drive is and I want to import from an external drive. I have always been able to until I updated to Aperture 3.6 and Yosemite.
I had the same problem. On the folders on the drive with the Aperture library did show in the Import panel. After I clicked the computer icon in the upper left corner of the Import panel, suddenly all drives appeared.
You can also try to drag the folder you want to import into the Import panel, to point the file chooser to the drive.

I can't import my movies to work on them. They are coming from a external hard drive, not directly from the camera, its type mpeg-e (.mts)

My movies are type MPEG-2
I can't import my movies to work on them. They are coming from a external hard drive, not directly from the camera, its type mpeg-2 (.mts)
What can I do ?

1. Is your external HD connected by firewire?
2. mpeg2 is the final compressed delivery format of a DVD, not intended for editing, and iMovie cannot handle such files, so you need to convert them first:
For that you need mpegStreamclip:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/mpegstreamclip.html
which is free, but you must also have the Apple mpeg2 plugin :
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/
which is a mere $20.

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 drive not working with Time Machine

I have an Iomega network hard drive attached via ethernet cable to my Airport Extreme router.
I plugged the hard drive in. Everything works like it should. I can see the drive in Finder and I can read and write to the drive. I do share the network drive in a mixed WIN and OS X environment. I never had to reformat the drive and I can read/write to the drive with no problems from all of my computers.
I turned on Time Machine on my iMac and walked through the simple setup screens there. I never set anything up on the hard drive through the drive interface software. And Time Machine worked fine for about 4 months. Then all of a sudden, Time Machine just stopped backing up and I got all kinds of error messages saying that the TIme Machine backup failed.
So I went into Time Machine, turned it off, turned it back on. No luck. Same error messages.
So I started fresh. I deleted the prior Time Machine backups and I am back at the TIme Machine set up screen. OS X can see the TIme Machine share on my external hard drive and I tell the setup wizard that's the drive I want to use.
Then I get a window that says it's trying to connect to the external hard drive which I call "Cloud_Drive". After about 30 seconds, I get an error window that says
"There was a problem connecting to the server "Cloud_Drive-TimeMachine"
The server may not exist or it is unavailable at this time. Check the server name or IP address, check your network connection, and then try again.
At this point the external drive is still visible in FInder and I can read/write to it from my iMac. I just cannot understand why Time Machine was working and then all of a sudden it stopped.
I did go into the software management of the drive and found an area in which to turn Time Machine on on the drive's side. Which I never did before so I turned it on and then I'm prompted to enter the name of the computer and the ethernet ID. I entered the name of the iMac and I have tried using the WiFI MAC address - no luck getting TIme Machine to work and I've also entered Terminal, found a MAC address under the line titled "ether" and still the same result.
I have also changed the destination of the Time Machine files on the external hard drive and the Time Machine wizard does write a sparcebundle file to that new location but still get the same error message above.

Is it a firewire ext. HD?
Yes, many are reporting same, there is a firewire fault and TB HD on external HD from LaCie (Seagate) and from WD especially.
Technicians are looking into it.
Until there is resolution, consider setting up a USB ext. Time machine HD.
Until then consider confining Mavericks use with USB HD.
Ive tested a long line of USB HD on Mavericks, all seem fine.

External Hard Drive not appearing on Macbook Pro or 2009 Macbook

Hello,
I have a G Technology G-DRIVE External Hard Drive, that until now has worked perfectly.
I plugged it in today to try and back up my macbooks through Time Machine, like I have done for the last year - and on ether of the computers, the Hard Drive is not appearing in Time Machine or Finder. Having browsed online, I found that it is showing in Disk Utility and in System Information - but other than that I cannot do anthing with it. I even tried to Repair the drive, by erasing it and reformatting it - and I cant do it - I keep getting the messgae 'Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.'
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, as I use this hard drive as a Time Machine Backup, and I'm unable to do so.

At best, it sounds like this HD is flakey so even if you were able to get it working again, I would not trust it.
PlotinusVeritas gives some great suggestions for purchasing external hard drives in this thread:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5602141?tstart=0

External hard drive not found

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