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.

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External hard drive not visible in Finder or Disk Utility

Hi everyone,
My Wester Digital 2TB external hard drive has disappeared, so to speak, with all my photos. I work as a freelance photographer. Mostly on Lightroom 5.6
When I plug it in, with firewire, I can feel the disk rotating normally however it does not appear in finder or disk utility.
I've tried using a USB cable, restarting my mac, forced restart, changing firewire ports (HD has 2 ports), plugging the HD into a different laptop and nothing.
Ive also searched Finder prefrences and visibility is enabled.
I have no idea what could have caused this as I was using the HD the night before. I didnt pullout without properly ejecting. Maybe the HD is full or almost, but I dont think that would the cause of these troubles.
I'm using a late 2011 Macbook Pro OS X 10.9.4
Any suggestions??
Thanx

An update for anyone who can help me:
I have tried the external hard drive in other computers (mac and windows), each time I get the same problem above.
I have removed the HD from the enclosure and purchased a docking station for it (3.5" SATA). When I plug it in to the laptop it disconnects itself straight away before it is visible. With the windows computers it installs the drivers and says that the device is ready to use, then disconnects before it shows up.
As the HD is not visible there is no option to re-format or anything.
This is very frustrating as I was using the HD with no issues and it randomly disconnected and I have not been able to access since.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Bruce

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 not recognized in finder

I am trying to pull up my Western Digital External Hard drive after connecting it via USB. I used to be able to open it through Finder and there is nothing showing up. What shall I do??

On the menubar, Finder > Preferences > General tab > check External Disks
Do the same on the Sidebar tab if desired.
Regards,
Captfred

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

G-drive not recognized by Finder or Disk Utility

I've been using this G-drive for almost a year now and have never had any issues. Today I just tried to use it to move some files off of my Macbook Air and not only would it not appear in Finder, but it doesn't appear in Disk Utility either. I've spent over an hour trying to find a solution but haven't, does anyone have any suggestions?

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 recognized by Mavericks?

I have a Western Digital My Passbook 500GB external hard drive connected to my MacBook Pro via USB.
It worked fine until I upgraded to Mavericks. Now it is not recognized at all in my Finder.
When I go to Disk Utility, it finds it and says "not supported". When I do "disk verify" it says it needs to be repaired.
When I try to repair it, it says it can not.
What do I do?

See: http://wdc.com/wdproducts/wdsmartwareupdate/wdsmartware.asp?id=wdfGeneric&os=mac
WD SmartWare update highlights:
Mac release 1.3.6 (updated 11/25/2013)
Fixed an issue related to reports of some customers, under certain conditions, experiencing data loss when updating to Apple's OS X Mavericks (10.9).For more information on this issue, please click here.*Please note that if you have a previous version of WD Drive Manager installed on your computer, this software package will automatically uninstall the old version and install a new version.

External Hard Drive not recognized.

Hello everyone,
I have a probem where my external hard drive is not being recognized by my late 2009 iMac.
The hard drive is an OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro connected to the firewire port.
It was working fine till this happenend:
I keep all of my iTuned music on the external hard drive.
I was using a meta tag fixer type program.
I dragged the files from itunes into this program (Tune Up) to fix the meta tags.
However, I missed the program and dragged thusands of .mp3 files onto my desktop.
My computer, of course, became unresponsive.
So I used the power button on the back of the iMac to shut it off.
I used my MacBookPro to connect to my iMac as a target drive, and deleted all the .mp3's from the desktop there.
Once I restarted my iMac everything was fine, except that the external hard drive has not been able to be recognised ever since.
The same drive shows up just fine on my MacBookPro.
Help!
Thanks!

I had the exact same problem! I had to force shut down my iMac (24in, Mid 2007) due to a system freeze. After restarting, everything was working fine, except for my external 1GB G-Drive, which was connected through FW800 port.
The drive connected fine to my MacBook Pro, but it would not be recognized by my iMac. I tried restarting, but neither Disk Utility, nor System profiler would see the drive.
What worked though, was Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC):
1.          Shut down the computer.
2.          Unplug the computer's power cord.
3.          Wait fifteen seconds.
4.          Attach the computer's power cord.
5.          Wait five seconds, then press the power button to turn on the computer.
The drive mounts fine now. I am surprised this is not mentioned by Apple in their support documents! It has happened twice to me and it was the only thing worked both times. The link for the resetting the SMC is here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
Hope this helps solve your problem too.

Panther crashed now external hard drive not recognized

I was away and a person that lives where I work on my computer set up his computer right next to my G4 iMac. When I looked at the screen it was trying to boot into start up mode but wasnt making it. I firgure it must have been caused by all the pluging and unpluggung.
I tried the resart disk but still has problems, so I reinstalled 10.3.9 al over again. Now its working but it doesnt reognize my external Lacie hard drive.
Ive tried restarting a cople of times, I cant firgure out what could be the trick.
Has anyone any ideas?
iMac Mac OS X (10.3.9)
iMac Mac OS X (10.3.6)
Mac OS X (10.3.6)

I would try the Combo; it's worth a try!
I don't know if the following will help with your issue , since it shows up in Safe Boot, but here it is.....
External hard drive spontaneously unmounted? Try these tips:
NEW FIRMWARE: Try updating your external hard drive's firmware, which is available from your drive manufacturers Web site--or just use VersionTracker's (www.versiontracker.com) search function to find it. Be sure to back up your data before applying the update, and carefully follow the manufacturers instructions.
OUT OF iSIGHT: If you're using an iSight camera while you're using a FireWire drive, the camera may be interfering with the drive's ability to stay mounted. Try temporarily disconnecting your iSight and moving it to a separate FireWire port. If you have multiple FireWire devices, try using a FireWire hub.
POWER PROBLEM: A faulty power adapter could be causing your drive to unmount. Your drive may not be getting enough juice to stay on, causing the drive to turn off and thereby unmounting it from your Mac. Alternately, the power adapter may not be providing a steady amount of power, causing your drive to turn on and off. Try replacing the adapter. If you can't get a replacement adapter from the hard drive manufacturer, try your local electronics store. Just make sure the adapter you choose has the same connector and input/output voltage. you can find the input/output voltage on the adapter itself.
Cheers!
DALE

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

USB external hard drive not recognized by computer - using WRTSL54GS

Hi, I have my router (WRTSL54GS) set up and seems to be working ok, but the computer does not recognize it in my network. It only recognizes it as a wireless connection. Also, the USB hard drive I have attached to the router is not recognized anywhere on my computer. What am I doing wrong? Any help would be appreciated!

hi - thanks for responding! I have comcast and have their modem. I hooked up the router with my laptop and went through the setup fine. Everything with that works ok. The USB drive is recognized on the web based utility program that you use to set up the router. However, no where on my computer can I find the USB drive or where to even set up that driver. The manual says that my router should be listed as a another computer in my network neighborhood and that I should be able to find the hard drive through that. It is not. Its only listed in my wireless connections. I talked to a rep at linksys for awhile. In the end, they just suggested unplugging it and plugging it back in......that didn't work! Does that help?

Toshiba External Hard Drive not recognized by computer. Please help!

I was wondering if anyone could help me. I have an external hard drive and it will not show up in "My computer" when I plug it in. I have tried other USB drives and other computers. I am starting to think it is a hardware issue but I don't want to lose hope. The blue light is coming on when you plug it in but it doesn't blink and there is no noise whatsoever. Is there anything I can do to fix this issue so that I can recover the information on it? Thanks in advance for any help. It is greatly appreciated.
Additional information: I'm not sure how old this thing is but the model number is HDDR160E03X.

Same problem: I can't see my Toshiba PH3100U-EXB (Gen 2) external hard drive when I plug it in. After awhile I get this error message (see attachment): USB Device Not Recognized. One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognize it. FOr assistance in solving this problem, click this message."
When I click it, I get a list of USB ports and devices, with Unknown Device in bold face. No real information there.
Yes, I ran Disk Management and the Toshiba did not show up when I plugged it in and hit Refresh.
Does it make a difference that the last time I used the external hard drive, we were in Windows XP and now we're in Windows 7?
Please help! It's not just the backing up I'm worried about...it's being able to retrieve files later!
Thanks!
Attachments:
USB-NotRecognized.jpg ‏28 KB

External hard drives not recognized by imac

I am a new Mac user and have been having lots of trouble getting my external hard drives to mount. I have a simpletech and a seagate external hard drive both NFTS formatted neither of which is recognized by my iMac. They don't show up on disk utility or system profiier under USB ports. They both work on my PC laptop and a friends iMac (OS 10.6.4) just fine. I have a card reader and flash drive that work perfectly on my iMac. Apple support orginally thought it might be the logic board so they replaced it. The new one is having the exact same problem. Does anyone have any idea what could possibly be the problem?? This is driving me insane.

I'm having exactly the same problem with a new iMac purchased one week ago. I have two Maxtor drives and one WD, all firewire 400 drives, all of which mount briefly and then unmount and will not mount again. I am not new to Macs. The drives work fine on the older PowerPC Mac running 10.4.11. These drives contain my backups and aren't recognized by the new iMac. I cannot believe that 3 external drives are all going into failure mode at the same time since they were all purchased at different times and only used as backup drives, so they weren't on all of the time. Is there an incompatibility between 800 and 400?? I'm using a LaCie 800 to 400 firewire cable. Suggestions??

Now, USB External Hard Drive Not Recognized after 10.6.8 Update

My external Hard Drive is not recognized on start up. I have to unplug it and plug it back in for it to be recognized.
All this since 10.6.8 updated today.
I'm a fool for updating the same day.
This has happened before and I always forget the bugs in the software when it first comes out.

Alright, I'm gonna go ahead and close this thread. I found out the solution to my issue. Turns out it was a problem with a system file I changed right before installing. The error only occurred on a restart... the required 10.6.1 reboot was the first reboot since the change, so thus it looked like the culprit.
If you want a more thorough explanation of my problem (highly HIGHLY doubt it's gonna help you guys out), check this thread --> http://forums.appleinsider.com/showpost.php?p=1480362&postcount=8
Sorry for the trouble!

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.

External hard drive not recognized in Finder or Disk Utility

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