External hard drives won't mount after upgrading to Tiger 10.4.9. Help!

Hi, I've just got the latest iMac. Very excited! I did all the software updates, connected my Western Digital extended hard drive so that I could copy some files over onto my new Mac. It was fine at first. Then when I wanted to open up the external hard drive icon on my desktop again and double clicked on it, everything disappeared from the screen for a few seconds, then reappeared but my external hard drive simply opened the window to my personal hard drive on the Mac. The WD links to my computer via Firewire. I then connected my USB external hard drive stick and it was the same story.
I used Disk Utility to test everything and everything was fine.
I then reinstalled Mac OSX 10.4.8 and plugged in my external hard drives. Everything worked perfectly. After copying over documents and a couple of programs, and downloading a few more programs, I ran my software updates again, upgrading the operating system to Tiger 10.4.9. I attached my external hard drive and it was the same problem all over again.
I the read up the online discussions and also chatted to an Apple dealer, and their advice was to download the Intel Combo and reinstall the operating system. I have just done this and my external hard drives will still not mount properly. Their icons appear on screen but double click them and everything disappears.
Please help. This is really frustrating as I have a backlog of work to do and I seem to be wasting hours on this. Not only that, this is a brand new machine which I rightly expect to work straight away.
I look forward to your response. Thank you in advance.

Hi, try to put your HDD in other Mac and look if appear the same, also you can try to repair permission.

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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.
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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.
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~
message 2- when unplugging and repluggin the usb in-and upon
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~
( 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
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~~~~~
If there is a mac genius out there that can help?- it would be greatly
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~~~
At this point, I am hoping to just get the files and photos off
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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.

Hard Drive Won't Mount After Repair by Second Computer

I have an G4 Cube with OS 10.2 on the internal hard drive (which is full) and OS 10.4 on an external La CIe hard drive (that I use as my main OS). The external hard drive accumulated serious damage that couldn't be repaired by Disk Utility on the internal drive. My copy of DiskWarrior X would not run under OS 10.2 (10.4 was required) and it wouldn't boot from the CD either So I connected the external hard drive to my second computer, an iMAC running OS 10.5. (Unfortunately, I disconnected the external hard drive when the computer was off instead of ejecting the drive by dragging it to the Wastebasket.) The external drive mounted and DiskWarrior easily constructed a new directory, defragmented the files, and eliminated all of the damage on the external hard drive visible to Disk Utility. However, when I reconnected the repaired external hard drive to the G4 Cube, the drive wouldn't mount. Privileges were repaired on both computers with the external drive connected without helping. Being repaired while connected to a higher OS or perhaps simply being connected to a higher OS seems to have left the LaCie external hard drive in a state which couldn't be mounted by an earlier OS.
Following this hypothesis, it booted the G4 Cube from the OS 10.4 Installation CD while the LaCie external hard drive was connected. When I cancelled installation of OS 10.4, I was asked to choose a start-up disk AND OS 10.4 WAS NOW MAGICALLY AVAILABLE ON THE EXTERNAL DRIVE. Simply starting up from a more advanced OS allowed the hard drive to mount.
Shockingly, when I restarted from OS 10.2, the external hard drive was still mounted. Whatever was preventing the drive from mounting was a TRANSIENT STATE, not backwards incompatability.
POSSIBLE LESSON: If a hard drive won't mount on computer A after being connected to computer B, consider booting computer A using the OS on the installation disk from computer B.

If you need to repair a hard drive with OS X installed on it, you must use that same version of OS X to perform the repair. Using another--in this case, newer--OS can cause quite a bit of trouble, as the directories/permissions may be dealt with differently between the OS's.
Seems you've learned this lesson--and luckily you didn't lose anything!
~Lyssa

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

External Firewire hard drive won't mount after 10.4.10 update

I see many posts about USB drives not mounting after 10.4.10 update. Just lending my voice to that issue (my USB drive won't work either) as well as the 10.4.10 update breaking Firewire drives.
Hope a fix is coming. No backups are scaaaary.

How to fix the problem of a missing external Hard Drive (Firewire) after it vanishes from you desktop after installing 10.4.10 update.
I have a iMac PPC (Non intel). Aparently my system upated installed the wrong version of 10.4.10 and thus my external firewire hard drives a 320 GB Westerndigital My Book, and Acomdata 80 GB, and aWestern Digital 160 GB media center all vanished from the desktop.
The instructions below should be credited to several different people. I found various version of these steps in the Discussion. I combines a few of them into this one 10 step fix and it worked for me. I hope it works for you.
1) Shut down you computer
2) Unplug all peripherals (i.e USB and Firewire, I left computer power plug in as well as ethernet and Keyboard+ Mouse) and leave along for 30 Minutes
3) Restart holding down the Command (Apple) + Option + P + R keys for three startup bongs, then release the keys and your computer will start up as usual.
4) Verify and repair disk Permission using Disk Utility. (Several things were repaired here)
5) Instal 10.4.10 Combo PPC
6) Restart Again
7) Again repair Disk permissions (None of mine needed to be repaired fyi this time)
8) Unplug Power cable and Firewire cable from External Hard Drive (leave along for 1 minute)
9) Reconnect power to Firewire External Drive first then the Firewire cable to the drive second, then the firewire cable from the Drive to the computer last.
10) Turn on your Firewire Drive... you will head it spin up and eventually show up on your desktop just like it did before the 10.4.10 update.

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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.
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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!

External Hard Drive Won't Mount in 10.2.8

Greetings,
I have a MacBook Pro running the latest version of Tiger. I have a Maxtor 300 GB external hard drive (Mac OS Extended [journaled] ) which I use with my MacBook to store music, video, other media, and backups. I connect that drive to my MacBook via FireWire, normally, but the drive can also do USB.
Since wireless connectivity is so nice, I thought it would be nice to be able to access that hard drive from anywhere in my apartment, without being tethered to the drive by a FireWire cable.
Enter my wife's iBook G3 and Mac OS 10.2.8.
She has this computer from her school where she teaches. It has a G3 processor running at 600 mhz with 128 mb of ram. Since she rarely uses the old machine, I wanted to use it to "serve" my external hard drive to my MacBook.
But when I connect the hard drive to the iBook via either USB or FireWire, it does not mount. I ran Disk Utility and the drive is visible in the pane on the left of the interface, but when I verify the disk I get lots of error messages that say, "Reserved fields in the catalog record have incorrect data."
I don't want to let the iBook repair the disk because I am afraid it my screw the whole thing up and I would lose all my data...not a good proposition.
So, my question: What is going on here? Is this drive simply not going to work with 10.2.8?
I wish I could upgrade the machine to Tiger, but it does not have the minimum system requirements!
Thank you very much for your help. I apologize if I missed something else in the forums that addressed this same issue.
Macbook Pro 2.0 Ghz Intel Core Duo 1 GB Ram 15.4" LCD Mac OS X (10.4.7)

All you need to upgrade the iBook for Tiger is another 128 MBs of RAM. It has both Firewire and USB ports. You do want to upgrade it for what you plan to do. The problem you may continue to have, however, may be due to the fact that the age of the computer is such the disk controller does not support hard drive volumes larger than 128 GBs, which is probably the reason the drive won't mount.
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At least I did until I upgraded to Lion.
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Right after I first installed Lion they did mount and I was able to do a back-up. But since then I haven't been able to get them to mount.
Any ideas?

unplug all firewire connected external drives, power off the peripherals, your computer, take out battery if it's a power book, wait 10 minutes. resboot and plug in drives to power and the computer, it should be fixed. make sure your finder prefs are set to show drives.

External hard drive won't mount anymore

Dear all,
I have an external HD that would always mount without any problem on my black Macbook.
Last month, I upgraded my system RAM from 2GB to 4Gb. It made the Macbook much faster, but also seriously reduced battery life. In a drive to fix this battery problem I reset the SMC.
Now, I do not know if these issues are related, but the strange thing is that mre or less since then my external drive won't mount anymore. The external drive itself seems fine. And when i plug it into a (powered) USB port of my external display, it will mount. But connecting it directly to the Macbook it won't anymore.
Somehow it seems like the Macbook's USB port is not giving off enough power anymore. Maybe it's because of the SMC reset?
Any ideas????
Thanks

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

External hard drives won't mount after upgrading to Tiger 10.4.9. Help!

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