External Hard Drive not mounting. In Disk Utility, the partition in the drive is greyed out.

So my Seagate 500GB drive, didn't mount the other day, and I investigated a bit and tried repairing the disk and this happened... please someone give me hope! Ihad so many important and irreplaceable videos and documents on this drive!!!

Anyone? Please?

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My iphone 4s will not connect to networks. the button is greyed out and cannot turn o. I have reset the network settings and it still does not work - any ideas?

My iphone 4s will not connect to networks. the button is greyed out and cannot turn on. I have reset the network settings and it still does not work - any ideas?

Thank you I tried the reset again did not fix- I think I am down to calling Apple and paying for a tech - phone company says it is a software problem. I just updated to 8.1.3 - I thought the update might fix it.

Internal hard drive does not mount in disk utility

My internal hard drive no longer mounts in Disk Utility. It is grayed out. I have extraordinarily frequent spinning beach ball/freezes, in Safari or Apple Mail. The most recent symptom: upon rebooting or just starting up, I see flashing black on the display. This has been occuring for more than six months. Of course, I have made total and frequent backup's. I bought new RAM, but have not yet installed it, and I susect this might help. I have done repeted troubleshooting many times each: Apple's Disk Doctor, Repaired Permissions, Reinstalled the Mac OS, safe boot, Alsoft's Disk Warrior, Apple's longer Harware Test, etc. I have worked as a new user, too. All tests done report that all is well. What od you thnk the problem is? Must I drive 1.5 hrs. each way to the Genius Bar at my nearest Apple Store? Might I try to erase the hard drive as a fix? I hate to do this, only as a last resort, as it is so time-consuming. Should I just update my Mac OS? Please advise, out there, if anyone can offer any advice, I would be greatly appreciative.

The list of issues you posted probably would not get shorter if you attempt to 'upgrade them' away, as usually that kind of effort is not effective yet may expose more of the same problems while not necessarily revealing the original weakness. Another OS X installed over a set of problems seldom helps.
How full is the hard disk drive? If it is too full, or has been very busy in use several years, it may be time to replace the HDD and perhaps put a larger capacity one in the computer. And if the main computer hardware checks out OK (tested under a variety of duration and stress tests) then also consider a RAM upgrade if the device is not already at the maximum capacity.
When was the last time the hard disk drive was devoid of content, maybe wiped -- erased and reformatted by a third party disk utility or have a utility overwrite the entire HDD with zeros? This used to be a common tech service in the course of a major effort to restore a Mac. Or Defragment?
If you can do the latter, this could help resolve bad sectors and remove old data or corruption on the hard drive. Or get a new HDD and before committing a new OS X install & apps to it (or a re-clone of a complete backup) test the drive and be sure it is ready for use. Not all new drives are perfectly ready; some need to get exercise first.
I'd bet on a new hard disk drive of larger capacity (also note spin RPM rate and data speeds) and a full RAM upgrade.
If you have a backup clone on an external hard disk drive (in a boot-capable enclosure) you could really go to town and before you erase the main/only hard drive, make a backup clone and test its ability to boot the Mac. Or put the old drive and content in a suitable boot capable enclosure of the kind with its own power supply, and deal with it later.
Then consider a later version OS X -- whatever most recent version that model can support... {edited}
Good luck & happy computing!

Major Problem with Multiple External Hard Drives! Watch Out!

I've almost completely given up on Aperture and gone back to Iphoto due to a major glitch in Aperture that actually cost me loss of some wedding photos (approximately 20)! Watch out for this, it is damaging.
I have 3 external hard drives, and of course when you mount disk images and cards you gain them in finder on the left hand panel. It seems the order of the mount is crucial to Aperture locating things and consequently if the mount order changes Aperture can no longer locate the files, and worse if you import to hard drive it doesn't import to anywhere!
The situation I have is that the other day I was importing wedding images and was up to the last card (fortunately we had 2 photographers so the loss isn't as detremental) and the power went off. Happens a lot where we are.
So upon power comeing back on the external hard drives remounting, I have figured out they mounted in a different order to what they were previously.
So upon going back to Aperture I went back to importing to the same external hard drive location. It had no warning of a problem and seemed to import without a problem. However once it had finished, on clicking on the thumbnails the images wouldn't load. I imported again and the same problem happened, however I didn't realise and had deleted the files. When I realised I tried to locate the files using spotlight. They are no where to be found!
Also because of the re-order of my hard drives aperture can't locate previously imported (referenced) files. I can find these ones on the hard drive, so I haven't lost them, but it will take unmounting and mounting several times in different orders to try and get them back because I do not remember which way they were mounted!
This is terrible! Aperture is a mess. This sort of thing shouldn't happen. Besides it's still too slow and it has slowed my production time substantially. The only thing it has over Iphoto is it doesn't degrade the JPEG each adjustment. However in Iphoto this is negligable, it can't be noticed, and I am not going to sacrifice time, lost photos for a minute level of extra quality.
Aperture get your act together. I wasted my money back when I purchased the full price 1.0 version.
Has anyone else experienced this problem?

Hardly high and not mighty.
But, to your points.
It sounds like you do have a UPS, not a surge protector, though it probably provides this in addition.
The fact that your external drives dropped during import is the same as removing a drive without unmountingf it, yes? Who knows what state the inode/allocation tables look like and no surprise that any clusters part updated were dropped. They'll rebuild from the cast complete mirror, but in-flight changes would not necessarily have been written to both sets of tables.
I cannot understand why (for you) Aperture appears to need the drives mounting in the same order. Disk Utility may show something, but I suspect you tried this.
However, and this I do challenge, the fact that you blamed Aperture and stated categorically it behaves a certain way when it does so only under some odd or errored hardware condition is not the thoughful optinion of an experienced Mac user. I wish you no offence but despite what you observed and your experience, I do wish to correct your sweeping statement.
The other comment I would challenge is that "I'm writing for people to watch out for and to trial ..." I would agree with that statement if that was any part of the context of the original post. No, your original post was far more negative and accusatory.
Your other new comments are clearly based on issues causing you angst. I have felt most of them, but at the end, it is software. Perfect? No, but I haven't had a crash since 1.5.1. Far from perfect? Yes, and many features missing that may be added in v2, v3, v.... . Best for my purposes despite its faults? Yes, by far. It is the fastest and most productive way for me to get to end-of-job.
Now my question for you since: what in your view is a superior alternative? Many on this forum are professional/serious amateur photographers who want some software company to succeed. Perhaps the reason we contribute to the Aperture forum is because we've found it the best horse to ride and therefore want to see it improve.
G.

TM: When external hard drive space runs out, can I add another drive?

I am using an external hard drive 1TB to back-up my new iMac with TM. When the external drive space runs out, do I have to buy another drive with much more space (e.g. 2-3TB) and start over, or can I just add a second external hard drive 1TB (will TM recognize the second one as an addition)?
Thanks for any help.

First off you should know that when Time Machine runs out of space on an external drive, it deletes the oldest backup you have. So if you are running out of space you probably don't need to worry as Time Machine will handle it. Just make sure the Time Machine backup drive has a higher capacity than the amount of data you have on your internal drive and you'll be fine. However, if you'd like to keep a lot of backups over a period of time you may want to consider getting a whole new drive. The only way you can add more drives to back up to is by using RAID 0 which I wouldn't recommend unless you have to due to the fact that you'd be more likely to lose data. The easiest option would be to buy a 2TB drive and use it with Time Machine.

Hard drive is greyed out, but still useable

I have a mac pro, with full hard drive bays. (2008 mac pro). Today, I started noticing that my main "data" drive is greyed out. Well, I actually have some short cuts to folders on that drive in my sidebar, and they work fine. But I can't access the drive any other way than going to that folder and "command+up" to show the root level of the drive. Disk Utility says that the drive "can't be mounted because something is using it" so I can't run a degular repair disk.
Steps I've taken:
1- the reading/writing to the drive works without issue if I use the shortcut alias' in my sidebar.
2- I started up under the recovery partition, and ran disk utility. It did NOT find any issues. I also ran permissions repair
3- I restarted the drive. It still isn't directly accessable.
4- worked fine last week
5- I can see the volume in the "about this system"
6- I've verified that the drive is set to "Ignore Permissions" (closed internal network, and I don't want to worry about file shares internally).
7- it is data storage ONLY, and not photoshop scratch disk
8- it DOES have a dropbox share on it. I tried quitting dropbox, but still won't unmount.
pic is:
SCRATCH_SSD os boot drive
"DATA" is drive that I can't access in finder. But I can access it via the "[JOBS]" folder, which is on the DATA drive
the other 3 drives are other hard drives in the computer.
THis second pic is what it looks like if I don't first access the "[ JOBS ]" folder

The volume is flagged as invisible in the Finder. I don't remember whether this works in 10.6, but on a later version of OS X you can remove the flag in the shell as follows:
chflags nohidden /Volumes/DATA

HT1782 External HD won't mount, suggests disk utility to repair, but I can't back it up.

Hello,
I'm having some problems with my Western Digital My Passport 1TB. When I plug it in I receive an error that says "the disk you inserted was not readable". I've read some suggestions that say to you Repair on Disk Utility, but others that say to back it up first. Unfortunately the disk won't mount so I can't back it up. Am I best to unplug it and try it on a new machine? Or verify? Or repair?
I'm sure this goes without saying, but the contents are extremely valuable to me. What is the safest method to retrieve it?
Thanks very much for your help.

I would try shutting down, unplug the WD external drive, restart and after getting to my Desktop, plug the WD drive in and see if it's mounted and readable.

Disk Images will not mount and Disk Utility will not runru

I am having some major problems with Disk Utility, Disk Images, and software update. First, Disk utility will not open or run. When I double-click the application icon, nothing happens, no message, nothing. I am running OSX 10.4.11. I have deleted diskutility prefs. I am able to run Disk Utility from the Startup DVD of Tiger. On first run, it verified and repaired permissions. I run verify and repair permissions several more times from Startup DVD and everything is fine. But Disk Utility on my startup HD will not work. Similary, NONE of my disk images will mount. No matter what Disk Image i try to mount, nothing will. And I cannot use Disk utility to mount them! So, no matter what I download, no images will mount. And thirdly, when I try to run software update, it will not work. I do get a message: it says, "Could not load Software Update." Finally, i tried to download Onyx to delete log files, etc.. but again, the disk image will not mount. I was able to install a dashboard widget called "maintidget" and was successful in running the daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance tasks. Can anyone help? Everything else works fine!!! All apps! Safari, Mail, iTunes, MS Office, everything works fine. Thanks for ANY help!

Previously, I had run verify permissions, repair permissions multiple times(from startup DVD) - no probems found. Deleted disk utility prefs. Run the maintenance taskes (daily, weekly, monthly). Nothing worked. But, I forget to check the drive for problems. So I ran disk scan. It found "invalid node" and repair disk could not do it. So, do I erase and do a fresh install or get DiskWarrior? I am running Leopard so I do not have Time Machine but I have backed up my documents, iTunes Library, iPhoto Library, etc... Another thing I found out the hardway is to sync all your bookmarks, mail settings and messages, etc... with .mac if you have an account. Any more suggetions?

It keeps saying my hard drive is almost full even though I delete as much as possible and use an external hard drive, cant figure out where else I need to look?

I've tried to keep my computer as organized and clean as possible. I only have 400 songs and not a ton of pictures. I can't figure out where else I need to look on my hard drive. Any suggestions?

I can't really figure out how much I have left in memory but here is some basic info:
Model Name:          MacBook Pro
Model Identifier:          MacBookPro5,5
Processor Name:          Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:          2.26 GHz
Number Of Processors:          1
Total Number Of Cores:          2
L2 Cache:          3 MB
Memory:          2 GB
Is there somewhere to look to see a breakdown of what memory is used where?
Thanks for your help!

HT4914 all my songs ive uploaded from my hard drive are greyed out and wont play on my phone. any advice?

all my songs are greyed out and wont play

Turn on the iCloud Download column in your song list in iTunes and that way you'll be able to see what has been copied to the cloud and what hasn't.
What is the size of your music library and what is the size of your hard drive?

Renamed external hard drives- cant find out to update Lightroom II - Mac OS X

Hello all,
what a great forum. this is my first question. How do I tell Lightroom where to update the new path to all the photos I have edited but used to be on external drive named "My Book" and now are on 'External 2"?
thanks for all your replies!
Scott

Scott,
This is the Photoshop Elements forum -- I suggest reposting in the Lightroom forum:
http://forums.adobe.com/community/lightroom

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.

My external hard drive has suddenly stopped working and the light's not flashing

Hello everyone.
I have an external hard drive that I've been using for the past year. It's a Porsche Design. No on/off button, just a light that flashes white when it's plugged in. The other day I found that the lead had been bent and the hard drive no longer worked when plugged in, so I bought another identical lead, brand new but the hard drive is simply not showing up. The light's not flashing, it's not showing up in my disk utility, it's nowhere.
Does anyone have any idea on what may be the problem and if there's a way of troubleshooting
Thanks
Tom

MBP = MacBook Pro.
The enclosure is the case in which an external HDD is mounted in. This is an example:
If you have access to another external HDD, take out the existing HDD, install the 'questionable' HDD and connect it to the MBP. If it does not show in Disk Utility, the HDD is dead. If it does show in disk utility, then there is a flaw in the connections (bad enclosure or cable).
Ciao.

My iMac won't mount or even read my NTFS external hard drive

I have a new model iMac running 10.9.4
I have a 4TB usb 3.0 external Seagate hard drive formatted in NTFS.
I cannot get the iMac to recognize it.
I've tried:
- mounting via disk utility: "the disk could not be mounted. try running first aid on the disk and then retry mounting" I haven't tried first aid because I don't want to erase or change anything on the hard drive. It also said I could try verifying the disc but haven't done that for same reasons. It works perfectly fine on my 2009 iMac.
- Finder preferences - external discs is checked
- I installed an app called NTFS-3G which was recommended along with MacFUSE 2.0 but that didn't seem to do anything
The only place I can see my hard drive is in disk utility, but it is grayed out.
Any help would be much appreciated.

You must remove the "NTFS-3g" software.
Any third-party software that doesn't install by drag-and-drop into the Applications folder, and uninstall by drag-and-drop to the Trash, is a system modification.
Whenever you remove system modifications, they must be removed completely, and the only way to do that is to use the uninstallation tool, if any, provided by the developers, or to follow their instructions. If the software has been incompletely removed, you may have to re-download or even reinstall it in order to finish the job.
I never install system modifications myself, and except as stated in this comment, I don't know how to uninstall them. You'll have to do your own research to find that information.
Here are some general guidelines to get you started. Suppose you want to remove something called “BrickMyMac” (a hypothetical example.) First, consult the product's Help menu, if there is one, for instructions. Finding none there, look on the developer's website, say www.brickmymac.com. (That may not be the actual name of the site; if necessary, search the Web for the product name.) If you don’t find anything on the website or in your search, contact the developer. While you're waiting for a response, download BrickMyMac.dmg and open it. There may be an application in there such as “Uninstall BrickMyMac.” If not, open “BrickMyMac.pkg” and look for an Uninstall button. The uninstaller might also be accessed by clicking the Customize button, if there is one.
Back up all data before making any changes.
You will generally have to restart the computer in order to complete an uninstallation. Until you do that, there may be no effect, or unpredictable effects.
If you can’t remove software in any other way, you’ll have to erase and install OS X. Never install any third-party software unless you're sure you know how to uninstall it; otherwise you may create problems that are very hard to solve.
Trying to remove complex system modifications by hunting for files by name often will not work and may make the problem worse. The same goes for "utilities" such as "AppCleaner" and the like that purport to remove software.

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.

External hard drive not recognized by OS

External FW HD not recognized by Disk Utility and "not available" to Time Machine. Had worked fine until last attempt to B.U. Core Duo, OS10.8.4. Suggestions to make this drive available again?

If the drive has more than one interface (USB, FireWire, Thunderbolt, eSATA), try one of the other interfaces.
Check that the data cable is securely inserted at both ends.
Try a different cable.
If you're connecting the drive through a hub, connect it directly to a built-in port on the Mac.
If you're connecting it directly, try a different port.
Disconnect all other devices on the bus, or as many as possible.
Test the drive with another Mac. Test another drive with this Mac.
If the drive is bus-powered, but has an AC adapter, connect the adapter.
Boot into Recovery and launch Disk Utility. Is the drive recognized?
Start up in Safe Mode and test.
Reset the NVRAM.
Reset the System Management Controller.
If the drive doesn't work under any of the above conditions, and if another drive does work with the same Mac, then the drive has failed. You may be able to salvage the mechanism by removing it from the enclosure and installing it in another one, or in a drive dock.

External Hard Drive not mounting. In Disk Utility, the partition in the drive is greyed out.

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