External Hard Drive won't start or load

I have a Western Digital 750G external hard drive that I have been using on my MacBook Pro for about 6 months. Last night it shut down and now I can't get it to even turn on or load onto the computer. Has this happened to anyone before and does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

obvious trouble shooting steps such as maybe trying it on another machine, pc or mac
does it mount or does it not mount, can you see the drive just not write to it??

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External Hard Drive Won't Mount- Need to recover files

Hello Everyone,
I am hoping that one of you fine mac experts may be able to assist ~
Problem: External Seagate FreeAgent Desktop USB external hard drive
won't mount on desktop=ie: no access to my important files.. Please Help!
Details:
External seagate freeagent 500 GB Desktop USB HD ( only 2 months old)
(using for document / file backup-not as a startup disc)
on my Mac G3 350 MZ Blue & White Tower /768 ram/ running OSX 10.1.5 & OS9.2~
~
Problem: Started using the external 500 GB HD 2 months ago -with no problems-until this morning. Tried to double click to open it to access files
and got the "beach ball of death" and needed to restart.
My trusty G3 started up fine, however, the external HD was now
not showing up on the desktop as normal. I troubleshooted -by restarting,
trying different a/c plugs/ different USB ports , ran disk utility..called
seagate -not much help . Seagate said to try the HD on another mac-which I did-
a G5 tower- same problem.
~
The External hard drive will show up in disk utility, but is grayed out.
and when click "mount" same two messages keep showing:
message 1: "a disk attempting to mount as unknown has failed verification or has failed to
mount.please use disk utility to check the disk"
~
message 2- when unplugging and repluggin the usb in-and upon
restart:" you have inserted a disk containg no volumes that mac osx
can read to use unreadable volumes,click initialize to continue with the disk inserted ,click continue"
~
( I really need access to these files- and do not want to re-initialize the HD!!)
I ran Disk Utility /first aid "verify & repair , the following info came up:
Repairing disk "main backup 2007 ".
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid key length ( <<<IN RED )
Repair completed. "
~~
Though it said the repair was completed, the "invalid key length" issue
still comes up when re-running disk utility...Hard drive would still not
mount on desktop-even after restarting .
~~~~~
If there is a mac genius out there that can help?- it would be greatly
appreciated. I have tried to call seagate several times in the last several hours-
1st time-they disconnected me after being on hold 10 minutes-2nd call
I was put on hold for 40 minutes ..Finally spoke to someone ( they are not mac users or mac experts!)and he said I would need to send it to Seagate's Data Recovery-... for a fee of course!
~~~
At this point, I am hoping to just get the files and photos off
the hard drive- I heard about Disk Warrior-should I use that and if so
what version?
Thank you very much!
L

Will zapping the PRAM be of any use in getting the external to mount on the desktop?
Your external Hard drive is already recognized. But it cannot be mounted on the desktop due to its directory damage. You can certainly Zap the PRAM, and it will not hurt anything, but I am skeptical that it will change the situation.
Do you think the Disk Warrior 4.0 cd will even work on my G3 350MHZ running Mac OS 10.1.5?
If you boot from the CD and run it from the CD, absolutely yes. If you attempt to INSTALL it from a download or a CD, probably not.
Have you ever used Disc Warrior and is using it complicated?
I own and use Disk Warrior. You select the drive to be rebuilt, it builds a proposed new directory from the information and file fragments available.
When complete, it will provide a list of problems encountered, tell you what files have been placed in the "Rescued Items" folder, and allow you too look at your drive using the proposed new directory. Your only decision is whether the new directory seems to be an improvement over the old \[in your case, hopelessly corrupted] directory. You then tell it whether to replace the old directory with the proposed new directory, or to abandon its work and leave your Hard Drive unchanged.
Is there a good chance that the ext HD will still have my files on it- or do you think from what I've described that they are gone ?
From what you have described, your files are very likely to still be there. Sometimes in a situation like this, a handful of files cannot be recovered.
My other thought was to take the external HD there and have them try to recover the files.
Make sure you completely understand the costs involved. File recovery using a service like DriveSavers can run into many hundreds of dollars. They are prepared to disassemble your drive in a clean room and replace controller boards and read/write heads to achieve success. Your drive has serious, but not fatal, Directory damage. The Hardware, and most of your files, are likely just fine.

External hard drive won't unmount for disk utility.

Im not sure if this is the right topic area but I have a white macbook and my external hard drive won't unmount. I want to erase it via disk utility but it keeps telling me other programs are using it.

Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.

External hard drive won't mount, even after disk repair.

My Toshiba external hard drive won't mount on my MacBook Pro 10.8.5. I can see it in my disk repair, and when I repair, "the partition map appears to be ok." But I can't access the icon to be able to open the hard drive contents on my desktop. Help!

Hello maccynicwhoalwayshasmacs,
Thanks for the question. After reviewing your post, it sounds like trouble with an external HD mounting. I would recommend that you read this article, it may be able to help you resolve or isolate the issue.
USB and FireWire Quick Assist
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Have a nice day,
Mario

After installing snow leopard my external hard drive won't show up on screen or backup

Afer installing leopard my external hard drive won't show up on my desk top. It also won't backup my hard drive with time machine. I need help.

Try going to finder preferences, general, make sure show these items on desktop external disks is clicked. You can also go to sidebar (same pane) and click it there so it will show when you open your HD. Time Machine>system preferences>time machine>turn it off click select disk, make sure the correct disk is selected, the turn TM back on. Hope this helps.

External hard drive won't shut down after switch from OS10.5 to OS10.4.11

i recently chanded my OS from 10.5 to 10.4.11 (as a programme i want to use is not compatible with leopard), but since i have done this my external hard-drive won't shut down automatically when i shut down my mac. i have to switch it off at the plug instead.
can anyone suggest how i can get it to do this again?
i'm a little concerned that i'm damaging the external drive by turning it off manually all the time..
thanks

Some hard drives shut off with shutdown, some don't. Sometimes hard drives that did shut off with one system will not do the same with a different system. My hard drives which did shut off, prior to 10.5 now stay on.
This is not really a problem as all hard drives spin down after 10- 20 minutes when not in use, whether your computer is on or off. Leaving the drive on is fine, shutting it off manually is fine.
-mj
[email protected]

I just installed OS X Yosemite and now my WD My Book Live external hard drive won't re-connect. My Safari keeps kicking out and giving me error message after error message and my computer is really slow. How do I resolve? Can I uninstall this ?

I just installed OS X Yosemite and now my WD My Book Live external hard drive won't re-connect. My Safari keeps kicking out and giving me error message after error message and my computer is really slow. How do I resolve? Can I uninstall this ? I had to re-connect my iMovie t

USB2.0 PCI cards that use the NEC chipset seem to give the least amount of problems for Mac users.
OWC have a few different ones for sale.
http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Search.cfm?Ntk=Primary&Ns=P_Popularity%7c1&Ne=5 000&N=7057&Ntt=USB2**0**cards
Do you also connect the external USB drive to the AC power as well while you use it ?
Sometimes USB external drive problems are resolved simply by plugging them into the mains power and trying again.
Stewie
Message was edited by: stewiesno1

External Hard Drive won't load, Disk Utility and System Profiler crashes,

I've had the WD 1TB Passport for Mac for about a year now and as of this afternoon, my MacBook Pro stopped recognizing it. It's encrypted so when I plugged it in, my computer asked me for my password, but then it said there was an error and wouldn't mount. After restarting the computer, the password prompt for my external drive didn't even pop up. I can hear the hard drive spinning and the light flashes for a good 30 seconds before going solid. I have tested my USB ports with flash drives and they are reading them just fine. I tried to run Disk Utility but it goes into the never-ending loading mode. So then I go to the "About my Mac" page and clicked on storage, and the profiler crashed (never-ending loading). Can anyone help me? It was working just fine up until today. I even tried different Micro USB chords on it. This drive is incredibly important to me and I would appreciate not having to erase anything from it (kinda defeats the purpose of backing up a computer if the external hard drive is the one needing the backup).
I have a
Mid 2010 13in MacBook Pro
OS X 10.8.2
1TB WD Passport for Mac

Solution may be found if you search in the "More Like This" section over in the right column.

External Hard Drive won't mount on desktop!

Hey, guys.
I ran into a problem this morning that I've never ran into before and I wasn't sure where to write it but I thought this is best.
Here it goes...
Last night I had a power surge and when I restarted my computer, my external hard drive did not mount on my desktop. I than proceeded with restarting my computer, I relinked all my connections and I cant seem to get it fixed. I have a lot of material on my external drive that I dont have backed up (I know, a stupid move) anyways, I dont want to lose that information. Also, when I open up disk utility, the icon for my external drive is there and the partition I made for my external drive shows up also but the title of my partition for my external hard drive is not in bolded font. I tried to click the button to mount my external drive cause the specs tell me that it is not mounted but when I press the mount button, it does nothing. I than tried clicking the unmount button and than restart my computer and still nothing.
What problem am I facing and how can it be fixed?
Thanks.

Dear Jason,
Gary's advised is, IMHO, a very sound one.
The only thing I can think of about your problem, given the information you have provided us, is to run Disk Warrior on your external HD.
In fact, DW is particularly indicated in events, like:
"...you should run DiskWarrior when you suspect that there is directory damage on one of your disks. Directory damage can result in the disk not mounting (not appearing on the desktop when the computer is started), missing files or folders, an inability to move or copy files, or crashes when files are used...".
You could actually buy your copy of DW Licence on-line and download it directly onto your internal HD, starting from this "Information you must read before you make your purchase" page. A hardware copy of the software you have so purchased, will follow by postal service (or currier, if so you choose), shortly.
Follow all the instructions you will find in the download to install the DW software onto your main internal HD and then run it on your external hard drive.
DW has saved my data several times and in similar situations as you are experiencing. IMHO, you should seriously give it a try and, even in the unfortunate event it does not manage to solve your problem, it is one of those Mac OSX utilities which ANY Mac power user MUST have handy at all times.
So, no matter what, my opinion is that it is always well-spent-money those used to purchase your copy of DW: in the long run, you won't regret it.
In the event that even DW is unable to retrive your precious data, my suggestion is to contact Micro Com data recovery. It's going to cost you some money, but if you make a leaving out of the data you've lost on your external hard drive, it's going to be worth it.
All the best.
Costa

10.8.5 external hard drive won't mount

After installing 10.8.5 update my Seagate external hard drive that I use as my Time Machine backup won't mount. I can see it in Disk Utility, but it refuses to mount.
Anyone else? Suggestions?

Please read this whole message before doing anything.
This procedure is a diagnostic test. It’s unlikely to solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
The purpose of the test is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party software that loads automatically at startup or login, by a peripheral device, or by corruption of certain system caches.
Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards. Boot in safe mode and log in to the account with the problem. Note: If FileVault is enabled on some models, or if a firmware password is set, or if the boot volume is a software RAID, you can’t do this. Ask for further instructions.
Safe mode is much slower to boot and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including sound output and Wi-Fi on certain iMacs. The next normal boot may also be somewhat slow.
The login screen appears even if you usually log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin. Test while in safe mode. Same problem? After testing, reboot as usual (i.e., not in safe mode) and verify that you still have the problem. Post the results of the test.

Fantom external hard drive won't mount

I am using an imac G3 with OS 10.3.9. Until yesterday my Fantom external hard drive mounted. I dismounted it and turned it off. I went to turn it back on later and it won't mount. I selected initialize from the dialogue box that says it won't mount and when disk utility comes up it show the two icons for the internal hard drive and just one for the external so I can't do anything with it. Thanks for your help.
imac Mac OS X (10.3.9)
imac Mac OS X (10.3.9)
imac Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Thought you could use this info about getting FireWire to work!
First, you should always Repair Permissions in Disk Utility before and after any update; I would do that now. If you installed your update with FireWire plugged in, your Mac may not recognize it anymore.
Try resetting your FireWire ports by disconnecting all FW devices, shut down your Mac and unplug it from AC power (wall socket) for 30 minutes. plug it back in and try FW.
If that did'nt work, download the combo update from this site (yours may be corrupt), not Software Update, disconnect all firewire + USB devices except keyboard + mouse, Repair Permissions, re-install update, Repair Permissions again + try. Yours is the 10.3.9 Combo update. Others reading, download the Combo that applies to your system.
If that still did'nt get it Zap the PRAM. While restarting Mac hold down the following key combo Command-Option-P-R. Keep holding those keys down till you hear the second start-up chime, then release.
For those of you with Macs that are not PowerBooks or iBooks, a bad internal battery can cause FireWire to not be recognized, so make sure it's good!
Good Luck!
Cheers!
DALE
p.s. Hi to you too Sherry! Keep up the good work!

My external Hard Drive won't transfer files to Mac HD and causes Finder to crash

My external Hard Drive (Western Digital 2TB hard drive in a ICYBOX 2-bay USB 2.0 HD Dock) won't transfer files to the Mac HD. The transfer box comes up but stays at the 'estimating time' stage and remains like that. No matter how big the file/group of files are (biggest I've tried was only 500-odd MB) it won't transfer and stays at the 'estimating time' stage. When I try and stop the transfer, the transfer box remains at the 'stopping' stage until I restart the iMac. I can access other programs during this 'stopping' stage, as long as it doesn't involve the External HD.
When I attempt to open files from the External HD in Photoshop CS4, both Photoshop and Finder stop responding and have I have to 'Force Quit'. However, upon force quitting finder, I loose all icons on the desktop until I restart the Mac via holding down the 'Power' button on the back.
Ive looked at a few forums already and done a couple things they suggested to similar topics.
- I excluded the Ext HD on the Spotlight>Privacy tab.
- I verified the Ext HD via System Utilities. Some errors came up but the Repair was successful and subsequent Verifications have returned as 'OK'.
- I tried the Mac Diagnostic tool as suggested by Apple, but when I press the 'D' key on start up nothing happens.
The annoying thing is that this problem came out of the blue, the Ext HD was working fine 3 days ago.
My system:
iMac 21.5inch, mid 2010
3.6GHz Intel Core i5
8GB 1333 MHz DDR3
OS X 10.9.5 (13F34)
The Ext HD:
Western Digital 2TB
Mac OS Extended (Journalised)
1.91TB available on the HD
Shares a 2 Bay ICYBOX dock with another 2TB WD HD
Connected to the iMac via USB 2.0 to a 4-port USB 2.0 hub
Any help suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Tom

WD EHDs have an extremely high failure rate so don't be shocked if it is failing. However what you can do first is reset the SMC and PRAM first on the computer, do the SMC reset 2-3 times, sometimes the first try does not work. If this does not work then using another computer move the files to another EHD, this time buy a high quality HD, something like one of these

Copying large files to external hard drive won't work

I tried looking for this all over google and here, and i could only find old threads that didn't end up with a clear answer, so i decided to post one of my own for the first time.
Basically, I have folders of music and movies that i'm trying to move over to the external hard drive (2tb WD my book studio using firewire 800) and at one point during the copy, the finder copy window will get stuck and won't move any further. So the copy doesn't go on, and even if i try to cancel it only the beachball starts rolling and finder won't respond until i restart or unplug my external.
The weird thing is that even when I was copying a few folders that weren't too big, around 2gb or so, it did the same thing. BUT when i took 3 individual avi files that were around 3gb it copied fine.
I really don't understand what's going on, and I want to just take the entire folder, let it copy, and go do something else rather than sit here moving file after file.
Does anyone have any idea as to what's happening? I'm not sure whether to blame my imac or my external. external does time machine back ups fine tho.. I have it split into 2 partitions, one for tm and one as a FAT drive. Any help would be great! Thanks!

All right. So let's say your hard drive is named 'WD MyBook' or something like that.
Let's also say the folder you're trying to copy is your Documents folder.
In Terminal, you'd type:
sudo ditto pathToDocuments pathToWDMyBook
Now obviously, those are fake paths and don't actually represent where those things are, but that's to illustrate the syntax you need to use.
Your external drive path will be something like this:
/Volumes/WD\ MyBook
The trick here is that if there's a space in the name of the drive, you need to substitute a "\ " for the space. You can also put single quotes around the whole thing like this: '/Volumes/WD MyBook'
Everything here is case sensitive. You can also drag the icon for the external drive into the Terminal window, and it will paste the path into Terminal for you.
So the full example would turn out to be:
sudo ditto /Users/yourusername/Documents /Volumes/WD\ MyBook
If you wanted to make sure everything went into a specific folder on your external, you'd need to add that to the path you specify. For instance, if you want everything to go into a folder named Backup on your external, the command would then be:
sudo ditto /Users/yourusername/Documents /Volumes/WD\ MyBook/Backup
Either way,
sudo ditto source destination
That's it, just spaces between everything. Like I said before, you don't need the sudo necessarily, depends what you're copying.
I don't know if that makes any sense, I'm a little out of it today. Let me know if you need further clarification on any of that, or let me know what you're copying/where it's going and I can probably help you with the syntax. Or just drag and drop! It's easy.

New external hard drive won't show up in disk utilities...

I have a 2010 macbook pro 13" and just bought a 1tb toshiba canvio external hard drive.
The hard drive itself has a USB 3.0 hub running out of it and the specifications say that it needs to run into at least a 2.0 hub, which I have.
I know I will need to reformat the external drive to get it to work on a mac, but it won't show up at all when I plug it in... the drive starts spinning but there is no recognition by my mac.
Does anyone know what this is and how to fix it?

So far all MacBook users have been able to use this drive as a USB 2.0 by using a USB 2.0 cable with a micro usb connector (same as smartphones, Kindle, Nook) on one end. Connect the micro connector to the opening on the left side of the USB 3.0 connector on the Canvio - if you look closely you'll see that side is exactly like the USB 2.0 micro receptacle. That's all you need to connect as a USB 2.0 - the other connections are for USB 3.0 which no Apple system has yet (Dec 2011). Connect the other end (a standard USB type A plug) to your MacBook and it will work. If you want to use it for Time Machine, you'll have to reformat it. None of the supplied software will work with Mac You can read more at this thread:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3510032?start=0&tstart=0

WD 3.0 external hard drive won't mount to Mac

I've had this Western Digital 3.0 external for some time and now it won't mount. I'm running Yosemite on my iMac. Full disclosure, I did drop the drive a day before it stopped being recognized on the Mac but it wasn't a hard drop and the external drive was running just fine immediately after the drop. I've seen some posts on here talking about WD external drives not working after updating to Mavericks but I didn't have that problem.
I've zapped the PRAM.
I've made sure it wasn't the cable - I have another 3.0 drive that mounted just fine using that same cable.
This WD external drive is self powered so it's not a power source issue.
I've tried updating the Firmware but since the drive isn't mounting, that did no good.
The USB port on the Mac is fine - plugged in another drive and other devices in that same port and they are all recognized and working fine.
Just to make sure, I tried using another port. No different result.
I tried the Option key on a restart to get to Disk Utilities but it's not seen there.
While the drive was working, I was pulling music from iTunes to my iPhone, just loading it up for a trip. I keep all of my music on this one WD external hard drive. I loaded up about 70 songs and intended to load dozens more. While pulling some songs over, things froze up. Wasn't able to do anything in iTunes or, as best I recall, anywhere else. Things just froze. I hard restarted the Mac - via the power button - and since, the external drive hasn't mounted.
About ready to try this possible solution as described in this discussion:
Your dead external hard drive is likely fine! Great hope for your 'faulty' external HD
Soooooooo . . . help would be appreciated!

Hello
Ihad EXACTLY the same thing happen to my WD hard drive... MINUS the dropping.
Was organising my iTunes and iPhoto library, kept crashing, over and over again, then the last time, i restarted and it won't mount.
Except not only is the WD hard drive not mounting, after the crash and restart of itunes etc neither is my Time Machine hard drive which is connected via a LAN cable.
Exactly the same scenario, all the ports work, all the cables are fine etc.
Just went BOOM - not happy and stopped working.
All my photos and music are on this one drive.
Did you manage to fix your issue?

External Hard Drive won't start or load

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