External Hard Drive not mounting after...drop

Hi all,
Not really a Time Machine question, but my wife, not realizing an external USB hard drive was connected to my macbook, pick up the laptop and the external drive dropped on it's corner...slight damage. It is a 320Gb hard drive with three partitions....two for storage and one for time machine backup. The two storage drives are mounting find and seem OK, but the time machine partition is not mounting. Disk Utility sees the partition but can't mount or repair it and gives me the error "Invalid sibling link, unable to verify or repair."
Any ideas on what I should do next (other than back up the other two drives)? Should I try erasing the disk and see if it'll mount?
Thanks,
John

Johnk93 wrote:
Disk Utility sees the partition but can't mount or repair it and gives me the error "Invalid sibling link, unable to verify or repair."
If you have +Disk Warrior+ (4.1.1 or 4.2 only), or another heavy-duty disk repair app (that you're certain is compatible with Leopard), it might be able to repair the partition. DW is about $100, so unless you think you may need it for other things in the future, it may not be worth the chance.
Otherwise, if Disk Utility can erase it, it's probably ok. In this case, though, it would be worthwhile clicking +Security Options+ then +Zero Out Disk+ to be sure it can write to the entire partition.
Long term, though, I'd be a bit reluctant to trust my backups to it. (Perhaps a hint to Santa?)
Additionally, I am having trouble ejecting the two working partitions. It seems to eject them becuase they no longer appear on my desktop, but I get the "unable to eject...." error message. Not sure what this means.
See what happens after erasing the TM partition. That may clear it up. If not, try mounting them again.

Similar Messages

  • External Hard Drives not Mounting after Yosemite Upgrade

    I've just upgraded to Yosemite, and none of my external (USB) hard drives are mounting (they don't even appear in Disk Utility).
    Any ideas?

    MacBook Pro 2009. 250 SD, HD 8Gb Ram.
    I have had this issue for about a year...with no resolve!
    Apple and the User community have not been able to solve issue.
    I have had to work around it since the Oct 2013 Mavericks upgrade which “killed” (rendered unmountable) both my USB and Optical drives.
    Hundreds of replies and remedies have not corrected my issue. Hundreds of replies stating that if there was a global issue it would of been fixed by Apple, not true. And dismissive replies stating that there must be a hardware issue are very discouraging.
    So now, hoping to help the voiceless masses, I'm forced to share my experience.
    As I stated, I have been having the issue since one of the Mavericks upgrades. The upgrade rendered externally attached drives unmountable...They are all seen in Disk Utility. They are just not mountable. Regardless of the flavor of the disk format, either Mac or PC, they are found, seen and refuse to mount. I can see them using Terminal commands, I can see them in System Report. I can reset all the memory I want...turn it off, reset, sleep, turn on, restart...NOPE...And the optical drive takes in disks but ejects them after an attempted mounting. Keep in mind, there are no physical issues with either USB or optical drives.
    So now...I have had enough and need to correct the issue or buy a new equipment - starting to get into software development and need working equipment!!!
    For the past month, I have been visiting the Apple store to assist in my issues...Back Story: I'm an IT Field Tech for the largest department store in the country and I have the good fortune of dropping in the Apple store anytime I want...The Geniuses booted the MB with a bootable image of Mavericks, and the USB and Optical drives WORKED fine...So, after I had stumped the Geniuses with my problems, we agreed that we would attempt to format and re-image the MacBook...Fine, do it, it's backed-up, how you ask? - Via my wireless My Book Live 3T drive, which only took 24 hours to backup, AKA Time Machine!
    Great news! The re-image of Mavericks proved to work! I WAS able to mount external drives attached! How is that possible? Don't know, don't care! It just worked! So happy!
    But wait! I then took the laptop home. Connected to my WiFi, to update Mavericks to the latest version...Good so far! Then it came time for a Time Machine restore, AKA Migration Assistance restore...So, I proceeded to migrate data back to my MB via wireless drive, good so far, booted in Migration Assistant, and I chose to restore everything except the network files, thinking that may be an issue...22 Hours later, the MB migrated without issue...all apps and personal files had migrated! YAY!
    BUT NOW THE USB AND OPTICAL DRIVES FAILED TO MOUNT!!!
    Great now what? I know, I will just re-image and start again...WAIT, I don't have a Mavericks Install Disk, no problem, I will just create a bootable USB drive with the Mavericks Install Image I downloaded onto my MB this month...NO YOU CANNOT, because you have no use of the USB drives!...And, Apple stopped making OS CDs back in 2009...Oh, and that wouldn't of done me any good, because the optical dive was unusable, anyway!
    SO, back to the Apple store with my head hanging! At this point, Yosemite came out the previous Thursday, so no more Mavericks images, great! Perhaps the new OS will alleviate my nightmare!!!!...So, they re-imaged my Mac with Mavericks, drives worked again! SO, I took my MB home and attempted to download the new OS, Yosemite...which only took 2 days due to the amount of traffic on Apple's servers!...Anyway, Yosemite finally installed without out issue! Drives still worked! And so, I shutdown and restarted the system...No issues, USB and optical drives worked beautifully! Yay, Yosemite!...Fixed all my troubles!!!...Not so fast...
    And so, I, again, attempted to do a Time Machine restore, via WiFi, this time it took 24 hours to restore...AND it worked! All apps and personal files transferred without issue, So happy! Put the laptop in Sleep and left it home and went to work! Came back from work, tested the system without issues. Rebooted...USB and Optical drive are NOT MOUNTABLE!
    So now, what is the file that the restore keeps pushing to my MB that kills the USB and optical drives?
    I would just stop restoring from a Time Machine backup, but the only way to get into the TM image is to use Migration Assistant. I cannot view the date in time of the image in TM's Star Wars time line. So, I'm forced to back up everything from the image in Migration Assistance. Not sure that it being an encrypted image has anything to do with it...
    ...Regardless, what is being “restored” to the MB that continues to configure the OS in such a way that makes all external drives unmountable...keep in mind, my external keyboard, hub and mouse are usable via USB.

  • External hard drive not mounting after Leopard install

    Installation seemed to go ok, but when I switched on my Maxtor One Touch II drive nothing happened. Doesn't appear in Disk Utility but I can see that it is attached when I look at System Profiler. Any ideas what to try next?

    After giving up on the upgrade of leopard I decided to do a clean install (to get rid of all the junk) My Lacie 800 and 400 fire wire drives mounted with no problem. It turns out my seagate fw 400 drive daisy chained off my would not mount and cause the other drives not to respond in the finder till I removed the Seagate drive and then the other two drives worked fine. I daisy chained my Firelite 400 and it mounted fine and its being used for time machine. So far haven't been able to solved this problem, the Lacie and Firelites work fine.

  • External Hard Drives not mounting after upgrading to Lion

    The disks orked without issue before then I upgarde and nothing.  I see that others have had the same problem but I haven't seen and answer.  Can anyone help?  My iomega drive can be seen in DU but can't be highlighted and is running two red lights.  My Lacie brick disk has completely vanished.
    I'd happily go back to snow lepord if it's a simple fix.

    The disks orked without issue before then I upgarde and nothing.  I see that others have had the same problem but I haven't seen and answer.  Can anyone help?  My iomega drive can be seen in DU but can't be highlighted and is running two red lights.  My Lacie brick disk has completely vanished.
    I'd happily go back to snow lepord if it's a simple fix.

  • 2 different brand USB external hard drives not mounting- Firewire ok

    Hi, first timer here so apologies in advance.
    i have to different brand external hard disks and they both show up fine with a firewire connection. the trouble is that i need to use the usb connection and neither show up. (shows up in system profiler though but not disk utility.) why USB if i can use Firewire? I will be using the disk to connect to a Wii console via usb port and the Wii is not recognizing either disk either?
    Any ideas on how to get one of these disks to mount by USB?
    cables are fine as work with USB only hard disks.
    Thanks in advance

    Hello Bob,
    Thanks for your reply.
    Unfortunately it does not show up at all in "disk utility". But appears in System Profiler under USB. This is true of 2 different external hard drives that mount fine with the firewire cables. One is a 3.5 inch and the other is a 2.5 inch portable. The USB cable is not faulty as tested it with another USB peripheral. Now a big believer in coincidences. Am i doing something wrong?
    any other thoughts?
    thanks again

  • 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 mounting on bootup

    I have a USB2.0 Hard Drive formatted with ntfs, which holds my music. I have an fstab entry for it using ntfs-3g and I can mount it fine after booting up. But the drive doesn't automatically mount like it should. It looks like the system is mounting the fstab entries before it is finished detecting my external drive. Anything I can do to fix this?

    fwojciec wrote:I let my external ntfs drive be mounted by hal - I have no entry for it in /etc/fstab.  In order to have it mounted with read/write privileges I had to create a hal policy like this wiki page describes: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HAL … ntfs-3g.29
    I'm not sure if this solution is what you're looking for though...
    I actually tried using hal to do it and it didn't work right for some reason.

  • External Hard Drive not recognised after horrible crash and reformat.

    There's yet another problem with my MBP.
    First of all this happened: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=969838&tstart=0
    Since I got it fixed I bought a 500GB Freecom external Hard-drive and used it to back up all my stuff. It was a case of plugging it into the USB port and it mounted on the desktop. I've had it for about a month.
    I've only just got my MBP back from getting the keyboard replaced, then on Saturday night it crashed. And kept crashing. Then it wouldn't boot. Then it crashed when booting. Then it took me to a command prompt. I reset all the parameters laid out in the troubleshooting guide. I managed to boot in safe mode, but my Freecom drive wouldn't mount anymore. But it kept crashing and crashing. I finally managed to boot from the installation CD and I reformatted the drive and installed OS X (Tiger) afresh. But now my Freecom drive won't show up on the desktop at all!
    I ran a Hard Ware test after the reformat, and the code 4MEM/2/40000000 came up, then again, 1FCA8574, then 41530574.
    When I had the Freecom plugged in it would show in System profiler but not mounted on the desktop.
    What is wrong? I am really annoyed because my Warranty ran out yesterday and I'm only after getting it back from Apple to get the keyboard replaced!
    Please help!
    (PS - I have Leopard on its way to me, would installing this help?)

    (PS - I have Leopard on its way to me, would installing this help?)
    Not likely with all the bugs and issues going on with it...

  • WD Elements External Hard Drive not mounting

    My external hard drive is not mounting it is connected by via USB connected directly to my Macbook. When I connect it error "The disk you inserted is not redable by this computer". I can see it on Disk Utility however all options are grayed out. I also tried connecting it to my sister's windows machine same thing not mounting. I've tried this suggestion http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2176 but I got an error "Error: -69877: Couldn't open device".
    By the way it's a self powered 2.2TB WD Elements
    Badly needed help!

    I had the same info (with a WD essentials encolusre where I just replaced a 750 with a 2TB), but after closing both DiskDrill and Disk utility, the terminal worked. So have a look if there are any other disk monitorings on.
    good luck

  • External Hard Drive not mounting on Desktop

    Hello,
    I use a 250 gb Lacie external hard drive (firewire) for backup. For the past week, the external hard drive has mostly not been mounting on the desktop.
    I don't think it's a power issue, because after turning the unit on both the light indicating power turns on and I can hear the motor operating.
    As indicated on the Lacie web site, I went to disk utility in system preferences and repaired disk permissions for my Mac's hard drive volume. That doesn't seem to have made a difference.
    Does anyone have any other suggestions as to what I should do?
    Thank you,
    Manny

    Hi gavvx, and a warm welcome to the forums!
    Feel free to start a new topic of your own will get more individualized attention, and many more helpers!
    It can be hard to sometimes find where to start a New Topic, so here's the link...
    http://discussions.apple.com/post!default.jspa?forumID=758
    Did you try highlighting them, then the Mount button in Disk Utility?

  • External hard drive not recognized after time machine locked up

    I was backing up to an external hard drive (300GB Western Digital) and time machine locked up. I had to shut down the computer and restart. Now the external hard drive does not show up on the desktop?
    I can see it in disk utility but I am not able to mount or unmount the disk, I keep getting an error that the disk is in use. I tried to erase/reformat the disk and no luck.
    Any suggestions?
    Thanks for the help

    KTM450rider wrote:
    Do I need to boot from the install DVD?
    this is often the easiest and eliminates any "busy drive" problems. what's wrong with booting from the install DVD? takes a couple of minutes.
    My main hard drive is OK... the drive that I am having problems with is an external hard drive that I was using to back up my lap top. I just want to get the external drive reformatted, but disk utility will not erase it. I get an error that disk utility shut down, "please check the drive and make sure that the drive is not in use or programs are still running"
    Is their a way to do a hard or forced reformatting of an external hard drive, I don't care about the information on the drive
    I also tried disk warrior to recover the info on the disk and all it does is crash my mac pro????
    Thanks again for the help

  • External hard drive not recognized after power outage

    After a power outage last night my WD external hard drive is not showing up. The power light is on on the drive, the DVR is working normally, except my external drive is not showing up.  I unplugged power from the DVR and restarted it, but no change.

    I have a 2G Samsung drive in Rosewell external encloser running for over a year.  Two times have lost power and DVR would not recongize external drive.  The procedure I used was to reboot twice via menu>settings>customer support>in home agent>reboot STB.   Mine required two resets, the first reboot looks like DVR recongizes drive but does show as available but second reboot shows disc activity during last part boot up of box then external would show with all recordings and normal operation.   I have not lost any recordings.

  • External hard drive not mounting on emac, works fine on windows xp machine

    I am running an emac 1ghz powerpc G4 with 768MB sdram and version 10.4.9
    I have an external hard drive that up to a few days ago ran smoothly. It contains all my itunes, iphoto, and imovie libraries.
    Now it will not mount. It lights up, it runs, etc but I can't use it. I tried restarting machine etc. No avail.
    it is a usb drive. Today I took it downstairs and plugged it into my daughter's windows xp machine. It recognized it right away (I was shocked too) and everything is there good as before.
    I plugged it into every usb port in the emac and nothing. I am using the same cord on the xp and it works fine.
    Any idea what it could be and how to fix it. I read on hear a lot to use disk utility. However when I run it it just freezes. When I turn that external drive off disk utility runs fine.

    I am running an emac 1ghz powerpc G4 with 768MB sdram
    and version 10.4.9
    I have an external hard drive that up to a few days
    ago ran smoothly. It contains all my itunes, iphoto,
    and imovie libraries.
    Now it will not mount. It lights up, it runs, etc
    but I can't use it. I tried restarting machine etc.
    No avail.
    it is a usb drive. Today I took it downstairs and
    plugged it into my daughter's windows xp machine. It
    recognized it right away (I was shocked too) and
    everything is there good as before.
    I plugged it into every usb port in the emac and
    nothing. I am using the same cord on the xp and it
    works fine.
    Any idea what it could be and how to fix it. I read
    on hear a lot to use disk utility. However when I
    run it it just freezes. When I turn that external
    drive off disk utility runs fine.
    Your external drive is formatted FAT32 or FAT, or the Windows box would have a problem seeing it. (Unless you have MacDrive on that box, that is.)
    If it is formatted FAT32 or FAT, you are NOT going to be able to use Disk Utility (or any other Mac utility) on that drive. Disk Utility doesn't do FAT.
    I'd copy the contents of the drive elsewhere then start up Disk Utility first and then plug the drive into the Mac and format it FAT32 from Disk Utility. If that doesn't work, format it FAT32 on the Windows machine. Note: if this drive is larger than 32 GB, you're going to need to generate two or more partitions, as while WinXP can read FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB, it can't create them. Macs and Linux boxes can create large FAT32 partitions. Second note: if the drive is smaller than 4 GB, you might want to think about formatting it FAT instead of FAT32. Indeed, Windows may insist. Do not let Windows format it NTFS; Macs can read NTFS volumes, but can't write to them.

  • Lacie External Hard Drive Not Recognized After It Previously Was

    I have a 1 Tb Lacie Big Disk External Hard Drive that I have used for a couple years now.  I have a Mac Pro, an iMac and a G5 computer that I have previously used with it.  After I transferred it between computers yesterday suddenly it will not show up on any of the computers.  I have tried different cables and inputs, computers, other hard drives with the same cables (they worked), restarting the computers, etc.  The hard drives powers on like normal and you can hear it running, the blue light comes on in the front, but it never gets the disk loaded on the computer.  There is a "auto/on/off" button on the back that I have tried switching between but nothing seems to work.  Please let me know if this is a common problem and any way to get it to work as I would prefer not to lose the information on the hard drive, especially when it seems to be functioning just fine aside from not appearing on the computer.

    Even backups need backups too.
    And a 'good' case is one where you can pulll the drive out and pop it into your Mac pro drive bay.
    power supply bricks are known issue.
    Mac OS updates that affect those models.
    LaCie almost by their own invented the term and idea "reset firewire bus" routine after all.
    Years and you can assume not forever but eventually it could and will fail.
    I'd pick up a "spare" or replacement unit, one with eSATA/FW800/USB3
    http://www.macsales.com/firewire
    CallDigit 2 x SATA plus 2 x USB3 $139 - USB3 card and interface works better even on legacy (how long and old is USB2 now?) USB drives.

  • WD external hard drive not recognized after improper eject

    I have a WD Passport external hard drive that I've been using for a while with my MacBook Pro. The cord got yanked, causing the drive to improperly eject. Now my computer isn't recognizing the HD. Help! Of course EVERYTHING important is on this drive!
    I tried plugging it into a Mac desktop, which also did not recognize the drive.
    I plugged a different Passport into my MacBook Pro, and it was recognized, so I know it's not the USB Port that's causing the problem.
    I used the cord from the HD that mounted with the problem HD. Didn't mount with the new cord. So I know it's the passport that's causing the problem, not the MacBook, not the USB port, not the cord.
    I ran the disk utility, and the HD does not appear...It is powering up though- the light on the HD is lighting up. Oh please help!
    Did I kill my disk? Of course I just moved my entire iPhoto library to this location, and I haven't backed it up yet....

    No.  It may just require a 00 Phillips driver depending upon the enclosure.  Do the swap on a towel so that the little screws don't bounce away from you.  You will have to pull the HDD out from the connecting plug.  Do it in a straight line,don't bend it, and you may have to slowly increase pressure to get it out of the connecting plug.
    It's not rocket science.
    Ciao.

Maybe you are looking for

  • Apple TV Audio

    Does anyone know if you can use both the optical and analog audio jacks at the same time on Apple TV? The second zone on my receiver will only work for analog inputs, so I am hoping I can use both. Thanks, -Brian

  • Port created in Idx1 not reflecting in WE19 (R3 side)

    Hii Gurus, when im doing idoc to file scenario., i have to release the idoc from r3, for that im using tcode we19 testing tool. But the problem is the created receiver port (The port created in IDX1 in pi side) not reflecting R3. I mean I am getting

  • The Use of Folders in Portal Favorites iView

    I have enabled the Portal Favourites and one of the functionality this provides is to create Folders within Favourites.  The user can create links in the folders to organise their favourites.  I am experiencing problems adding folders, by clicking on

  • Specular Highlight colour problem - Leica M8 RAW files

    I have sent feedback to Apple regarding this problem. Use of the moire slider does not eliminate the coloured dots on bright specular highlights, for example sun reflecting off water droplets. By comparison, Capture One software produces bright white

  • How to get Midi echo function?

    I can't get midi echo function: triggering contemporary 3 (or more) channels of a multi instruments. How can it be done?