External HD Won't Mount, Only Shows up in Disk Utility

My external Time Machine drive won't mount any more. It seems like it's very sensitive to being disconnected
without putting it in the trash, and my USB interface seems to spontaneously disconnect -- possibly loose.
The drive shows up in HD Utility with the mounted name greyed out, but it can still be selected to try a repair.
It always says it cannot repair the disk and to back it up. Well, it IS a backup. Disk Utility does seem to give up
on repairs quite frequently anyway. I've tried df -hl and then fsck_hd, but df -hl doesn't give me a /dev name that
fsck_hd can use.
I've gotten into terminal and been able to look at some backups, so apparently something is mounted, just not completely
to the point of seeing it on my desktop.
Is there a way to moving these backups to another drive? Perhaps via an OSX-specific darwin *nix command for copying
an entire directory in Terminal?
Is there an app that's particularly good at disk recovery other than Disk Warrior (which tends to take days to work)?

Have you tried another USB cable?
Also, you may need to take the drive out of that enclosure and use a different one.

Similar Messages

My external HD won't mount anymore on Mac OS, Disk Warrior or TechTool Pro, but appears as "media" on Disk Utility. What do I do?

I have this 1 TB Caviar Black drive from WD, I've installed it on an external HD case and have been using to store large files like HD movies and old archive things. Its file system is Mac OS Journaled.
Last year, all of a sudden, it gave me the following error while trying to plug it in: "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer"
I was mad and left it for dead while looking for a way to fix it.
Then, again all of a sudden, it started working again, flawlessly and without any problems.
It worked well for at least 5 more months and then BAM... same error again!
I've tried DiskWarrior, TechTool Pro, Disk Utility and nothing... The disk won't show up on any of these apps, except on Disk Utility as a "Media" drive with 0 bytes used and unformatted partition.
What do I do?
Could it be the external HD case?

It could be a problem with enclosure, but it also could be a problem with the drive itself or the drive is possibly corrupted. I would start by contacting WD tech support.
It may be possible to recover files from the drive using file recovery software:
General File Recovery
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as MAC Data Recovery, Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive. Two free alternatives are Disk Drill and TestDisk. Look for them and demos at MacUpdate or CNET Downloads. Recovery software usually provide trial versions that enable you to determine if the software would help before actually paying for it. Beyond this or if the drive has completely failed, then you would need to send the drive to a recovery service which is very expensive.
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.
Otherwise, unless the drive fixes itself like before you should try repartitioning and reformatting to determine if the drive has failed or is now working properly.

Seagate drive not mounting or showing up in disk utility

I have a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500 Gbytes that I took out of its external casing because it was not mounting.
i assumed the sata to usb converter in the case was bad.
I took it out and put it in one of the drive bays on my MacPro 3,1 2008 and started my computer up.
my computer was beeping about once a second while it was in apple's version of a bios boot.
when i start it up the disk does not show up in finder so i go to the disk utility and the disk does not show up their either.
so i open my computer and touch the outside of the drive and its spinning just fine, it doesn't feel shaky or sound bad.
Any ideas to get my drive working?

I've pulled three Seagate Barracuda HD's from their external cases (GoFlex) for use either in drive bays or better external enclosures and all worked. However, there's a hidden Master Boot Record (MBR) in the first partition even when the GoFlex has been formatted for use attached to a Mac and the entire drive has to be reformatted with a GUID partition table for it to be usable.
In Disk Utility, is there even a Media line for the Seagate? If so, that's what needs to be partitioned. If not, do you have the Debug Menu enabled in DU? If not, enable it and see if that helps.
I had pulled the Barracudas out of their enclosures because there was no ventilation and they were overheating (Tech Support denied that but the SMART record showed they were). It's possible that yours was cooking for so long that it is now indeed fried, which would explain why it didn't work in its original enclosure any more either.

FW Drive Only Shows Up in Disk Utility

Hey All,
We've got a Granite Digital Firewire Drive that we use for nightly backups (with a fantastic piece of software called Deja Vu). To assure we don't confuse the backup drive for the regular drive while working, I changed the permission of the drive so that we could not read or write. In days gone by, doing so would present the user with a "you do not have access" message if you tried to access the Firewire hard drive from the Finder. But now, the drive is completely invisible in the GUI, and the only way I can eject properly it is through Disk Utility. The nightly backup appears to still be running as scheduled, but whether there's anything actually on the drive, I have no idea because I can't see it. More importantly, if and when we need that backup, I can't figure out how to access it, outside of using Disk Utility's 'Restore' feature and copy the (hopefully there) contents to another drive.
We're running Mac OS X 10.4.3 on all systems, and I have tried mounting the drive attached to other computers (a Dual 2Ghz Powermac G5 and a Dual 1Ghz Powemac G4). Thanks!
Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Check out http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1428743 and http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1425932 for ideas.

Mirrored RAID not mounting/not showing as RAID (Disk Utility)

I have 2 Lacie Firewire Disks set up as a mirrored RAID (created by Disk Utility). I've been using this setup for about a year with no issues. But today I tried mounting the RAID and I got this msg twice (one for each drive)...
"Disk Insertion - The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer."
It then asks if I want to Initialize, Ignore or Eject. If I leave this msg up for a bit it eventually just goes away. But the disks never load.
I opened up Disk Utilities to check and see if the drives were listed and they are, but the RAID is NOT listed. All of the first aid options are greyed out. I tried to mount each disk but they will not mount, I assume because the RAID info has been lost?
Is there a way for me restore the RAID or at least get my info off of the drives? They contain a large photo library that cannot be replaced.
Powerbook G4 Aluminium 1.33gthz Mac OS X (10.4.7)

I never technically fixed the RAID. I used the program Data Rescue mentioned above to look at the drives and pull my data off of them. What I found was one of the drives was in perfect order, and the other drive had stopped recording data MONTHS ago. Basically the RAID became un-paired and stopped working correctly, and only one of the drives was saving the data. It freaked me out at first because the drive I decided to recover first was the one that was missing data. But I then looked at the 2nd drive and it had all my data on it, and I was able to recover it.
Anyway, Data Rescue worked perfectly. Now I just have the drives running independently. But I am staying away from the apple software RAIDs for now, as I did some reading and they seem to not be so trustworthy.
Also, Data Rescue takes quite a bit of time to pull all your data off, especially when you have a couple hundred gigs of data. Hopefully this helps.
Sam

Hard Drive Not Mounting, but showing connected in Disk Utility

I accidentally locked myself out of my external hard drive. While it was connected, I went into the Info and went under "Ownership & Permissions" and unchecked the Ignore ownership on this volume and I clicked the You Can drop box and changed it to No Access. The drive doesn't mount on the desktop anymore but I see it in disk utility. What should I do?

Macintosh:~ matthewjavier$ cd /Volumes
Macintosh:Volumes matthewjavier$ ls -l
total 8
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 Feb 11 07:56 Macintosh HD -> /
d---r-xr-x 21 matthewjavier matthewjavier 782 Feb 11 18:44 Matt's Extra Brain Storage External
drwxrwxrwx 3 matthewjavier admin 102 Feb 2 2007 Matt's iPhoto & iTunes
drwxrwxrwx 3 matthewjavier admin 102 Apr 8 2007 Matt's iPhoto & iTunes 1
drwxrwxrwx 3 matthewjavier admin 102 May 13 2007 Matt's iPhoto & iTunes 2
drwxr-xr-x 3 matthewjavier admin 102 Dec 8 2006 mattstaycalm
Macintosh:Volumes matthewjavier$

Burned DVDs won't mount/read but seen by Disk Utility as containing data

Hi,
I've got a problem. I have about 200 burned DVDs which were created using my LG VHS/DVD recorder/player. I have used these same DVDs to burn from my external LaCie DVD buner with my PPC G5 running Tiger and my LG Blu-Ray burning with my MacBook running Leopard and those burns plays fine on all 3 devices. However, neither the LaCie DVD burner nor the LG Blu-Ray burner seem able to read/mount the DVDs created with the LG VHS/DVD recorder/player although the G5 and the MacBook, both using Disk Utility, can see that there is data and the size of it on each disk. I am also unable to create a disk image for some reason as it begins but halts saying there's an I/O error. I need to get the content of these disks onto Hard Drives to rip and encode. How do I get the computers to mount these disks which they clearly see are not blank?
Thank you

Try opening them with mpegStreamclip:
http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html
which is free, but you may also need the Apple mpeg2 plugin :
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/
which is a mere $20.
You should be able to convert them to mpeg2 which is the standard format of a video DVD.

My external HD does not mount despite it appears on Disk Utility

I have been using an external HD to keep my video library. Just this week I updated my library and everything was OK, but when I tried to see the videos on my mediaplayer the disk didn't appear. I connected it again to my iMac but now the external HD does not mount. I tried Disk Utility, the disk appear gray on the sidebar but it doesn't mount. I run Repair but I get the b-tree node size error and the disk still does not mount.
Please help!!!!

If DiskWarrior can't fix it, you might try Data Rescue II...
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
(Has a Free Demo to see if it could or not, but you'll need another drive to recover to).
Or FileSalvage...
http://www.subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?%20mainpage=product_info&productsid=1
to recover what you can.

My hardware RAID 1 only showing up in disk utility and not finder.

Last week I finally was able to take my early 2011 iMac in to have my Seagate 1TB hard drive replaced for the recall.
Late 2010 model iMac
OS X 10.6.8
OWC Mercury Elite Pro 4TB x 4TB Hardware RAID
When I took it in the RAID 1 was working just fine. When I finally got the iMac back and booted everything up the RAID 1 was getting the dialog box that read "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer."
I have tried going into disk utility to see if I can verify the disk and then saw it is coming up as two different volumes... Along with those two different volumes, I can not go to click verify as it is greyed out.
I contacted OWC and they said they have never heard of this and had two solutions, to try a software like diskwarrior, or if that didnt work I can take the drives out and try another external dock to see if it is the RAID hardware.
If anyone has any ideas as to what could help with this situation that would be great as I was under the impression (and told by a number of other people) that having a RAID 1 as my backup was good and should not need anything else. I just want to be able to get all the data off then I will rebuild it or send it into OWC.
Thanks!!!!

So a fault in the Hardware Raid controller could make it not read properly? I am planning on having a good backup set up after this!
As for the screenshot, the original was not set up with the SoftRaid. When I got the computer back I installed that to see if that may pick it up and make it at least readable to save the data on it. The two in question are the highlighted 4TB drives, which befor also read as one drive as it was set up in the OWC enclosure as a hardware raid.

External drive won't mount after plugging in iPhone - MacBook 13'' (2,1)

Hi Support Crew...
I have a 13" MacBook(2,1) running OS X 10.6.2. This is a 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo machine w/ 4 GB RAM & 320 GB hard drive.
Today, I had the Iomega drive plugged in via USB, along with my soundcard (MOTU 828mk2) plugged in via FW. This is a very normal setup for me which has been bug free since I bought this computer over 2 years ago. When I plugged in my iPhone 3G via USB I got an error message which comes up when you incorrectly remove a device. This was strange because I didn't unplug anything, I only plugged in the iPhone. The iPhone was playing music when I plugged it in and I had to unplug and plug is back in to get iTunes to recognize it.
Ever since this happened, my Iomega external drive won't mount. I am able to access it via Disk Utility (and ran the Verify Disk/Repair Disk - everything is "ok"), however I can't access the data on the drive. I really really need the data but of course can't access it to backup.
Disk Utility log:
500.11 GB Ext Hard Disk Media (black text)
Iris (grey text) - I ran Verify Disk & Repair Disk
2010-01-22 14:20:51 -0800: Verify and Repair volume “Iris”
2010-01-22 14:20:51 -0800: Starting repair tool:
2010-01-22 14:20:51 -0800: Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
2010-01-22 14:20:52 -0800: Checking extents overflow file.
2010-01-22 14:20:52 -0800: Checking catalog file.
2010-01-22 14:20:56 -0800: Checking multi-linked files.
2010-01-22 14:20:56 -0800: Checking catalog hierarchy.
2010-01-22 14:20:58 -0800: Checking extended attributes file.
2010-01-22 14:21:00 -0800: Checking volume bitmap.
2010-01-22 14:21:01 -0800: Checking volume information.
2010-01-22 14:21:01 -0800: The volume Iris appears to be OK.
2010-01-22 14:21:01 -0800: Volume repair complete.
2010-01-22 14:21:01 -0800: Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
2010-01-22 14:21:01 -0800: Repair tool completed:
2010-01-22 14:21:01 -0800:
2010-01-22 14:21:01 -0800:
System Profiler shows the drive (on both FW & USB ports when I tried other cords). This drive does not require power and I am not using a USB hub, strictly the laptops ports. And yes, the laptop's power adapter is plugged in.
System Profiler: Device Tree log:
Iomega eGo HDD:
Capacity: 500.11 GB (500,107,862,016 bytes)
Removable Media: Yes
Detachable Drive: Yes
BSD Name: disk1
Product ID: 0x047c
Vendor ID: 0x059b (Iomega Corporation)
Version: 0.01
Serial Number: 000000066273
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Iomega
Location ID: 0xfd300000
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 0
Partition Map Type: APM (Apple Partition Map)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
Iris:
Capacity: 499.97 GB (499,972,702,208 bytes)
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s10
When I tried to run Migration Assistant, I just get the spinning search circle and none of the drives come up, just endless searching.
The fact that I got the "Improperly removed device" error when I plugged in the iPhone makes me think something weird is up and it's not actually the external drive. There is clicking/whining/noise, the drives powers up fine and is recognized by the system but the mount point is now "not mounted".
Does anyone have any idea how to fix? If you live in SF, I will buy you a beer.
J

I meant to say; "There are NO clicking/whining/noise sounds made by the external hard drive"

My external hard drive will not open and only shows up in Disk Utilities. When I try yo repair it, it give me and error of invalid sibling link. How do I fix my external hard drive?

My external hard drive will not open and only shows up in Disk Utilities. When I try yo repair it, it give me and error of invalid sibling link. How do I fix my external hard drive?

Invalid sibling link may not be fixable by Disk Utility. (Disk Utility is very conservative, and will not attempt repairs that might cause you to lose data.)
It is an indication of serious Directory damage.
that leaves
a) third-party Utilities that will take those risks, or
b) re-initializing the drive (which deletes all your data) and restoring from another backup source.
c) "Copying off whatever files you can salvage" has gone by, and you cannot copy anything off a drive that will not mount. You may be able to use "rescue" programs such as prosoft engineering Data Rescue to copy files to another drive, but that sounds a lot better than its reality. You may get many files, but not get ANY filenames.

My Time Machine partition on an external HD won't mount in OSX, but loads and reads fine in Bootcamp

I've been using windows 7 a lot recently for school, and when i do, i can have my external HD mounted to access files (read only) if needed. Last night, after restarting to OSX 10.7, my data partition(not time machine) loads fine, but the other partition of the same HD that i use for time machine refuses to mount.
It shows up in Disk Utility as a greyed out name 'disk1s3' but i origionally named the partition 'Story Time Machine'. The greyed out partition shows up as 500gb, which is correct, but it says its formatted as FAT32. In windows, it says its formatted HFS.
I've tried running Disk Repair both in OSX and in recovery mode. I ran a checksum on the drive and it came back fine.
Any suggestions?

It could be a problem with enclosure, but it also could be a problem with the drive itself or the drive is possibly corrupted. I would start by contacting WD tech support.
It may be possible to recover files from the drive using file recovery software:
General File Recovery
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as MAC Data Recovery, Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive. Two free alternatives are Disk Drill and TestDisk. Look for them and demos at MacUpdate or CNET Downloads. Recovery software usually provide trial versions that enable you to determine if the software would help before actually paying for it. Beyond this or if the drive has completely failed, then you would need to send the drive to a recovery service which is very expensive.
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.
Otherwise, unless the drive fixes itself like before you should try repartitioning and reformatting to determine if the drive has failed or is now working properly.

External drive won't mount; works on all other computers

I have a WD My Passport Ultra external drive (USB) that is nearly brand new. It mounts / works fine on all other Mac desktops and laptops (older and newer), but won't mount or even show up in Disk Utility on my personal MacBook Pro. I am running OS 10.7.5. My computer recognizes other externals, and the USB drive I'm using definitely works. The drive is getting power - when I plug it into my laptop the light blinks and the motor whirs for a while, but the drive never becomes accessible.
I have already tried:
     • Repairing disk permissions
     • Resetting NVRAM/PRAM
     • Waiting several hours in case it was indexing
What could be the problem?

Okay so after a half hour on the phone with Apple support, I finally figured it out myself: I just needed a USB 3.0 driver. The tech said usually the driver is automatically installed when you plug in the drive (which apparently it was on all the other computers I tried it on), but for some reason that didn't happen with my laptop. Soon as I installed the driver, it worked fine!

LaCie external drive won't mount on iMAC

Hi,
My external LaCie external drive won't mount on my iMAC running 10.6.8 but will mount and show up on my PC as working fine, however I am not able to read the information on it as it was formatted for my iMAC. Therefore it leads me to believe this is a software issue.
I have reason to believe someone had changed the permissions and prevented the mounting of this external drive (which belongs to me) so that the contents won't be found on my iMAC.
How to resolve this issue?
Thanks in advance,
Cait

Cait,
Please try a SMC reset, it may take 2-3 attempts for it to work. Look over the instructions below carefully.
SMC RESET
Shut down the computer.
Unplug the computer's power cord and all peripherals.
Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
Release the power button.
Attach the computers power cable.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.
PRAM RESET
Shut down the computer.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
Turn on the computer.
Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
Release the keys.

External drives won't mount. not even virtual! PLEASE HELP!

I'm fairly tech savvy but I'm completely lost on this one.
I have a G4 867 running OS 10.4.8 Sometime after updating and running smoothly for sometime my computer stopped recognizing external hard drives.
I have two different firewire drives and a USB jump drive and an iPod and none of them are recognized anymore. They do not mount and do not show up in disk utility. However one of my firewire drives is an older system drive and if I have it on before start up I can boot off of it and it works fine. I'm not sure but because of this it really seems like a software issue.
Does anyone have any suggestions? I really want to update my iPod (it will charge but not mount) as well as use my other drives. As far as I can tell it is not directly related to 10.4.8 because it worked fine in 10.4.8 for weeks and there is nothing else I can think of that I added to the system that might affect it. Please help me..
Thanks,
Dustin
G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8) 1 GB RAM

I fixed it. I found another post that seemed similar and this worked:
Yang
Posts: 862
From: London, UK
Registered: Feb 28, 2003
Re: warning message-DISK IMAGES FAILED TO MOUNT
Posted: May 15, 2006 1:12 AM in response to: perrppc
It might have something to do with your kextcache. Try moving the following three items to your desktop and perform a shutdown (not a restart)..
/System/Library/Extension.kextcache
/System/Library/Extensions.mkext
/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kernalcaches/
Be careful when wandering into the System folder and folders therein.
Yang
12" iBook G3 800MHz Mac OS X (10.4.6)
the only thing that was a little different is that it wants to only copy those files to the desktop so I had to delete the originals, but it works 100% now.
here is the full thread: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2095270

External HD Won't Mount, Only Shows up in Disk Utility

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