External HDD recognised but won't mount/unmount

I have a 300GB Maxtor HDD in an Icy Box enclosure which I have been using with my PC for over a year now and my Macbook for the last few months.
Lately, I have been having some really annoying issues with it. In short, the drive won't appear to mount (ie it won't show up in the sidebar in Finder or on my desktop) but seemingly it has according to Disk Utility. The drive appears in the sidebar with a 'no entry' sign on it. Trying to verify or repair it in DU results in an error message saying that the drive cannot unmount. Restarting solves nothing. The only way I have found to resolve the issue is to plug it into my PC, fire it up and then disconnect it before using it again on my Mac. This is far from ideal.
I recently installed VMWare Fusion which definitely caused this problem the first time. I shut down Fusion without 'safely disconnecting' the drive from XP and then disconnecting it from Fusion first. I understand that it may be that Fusion is still accessing a file on the drive preventing it from unmounting but I would have thought that a restart would resolve that issue - it doesn't.
I know about the 'lsof' function in Terminal but I do not know what to do after I get the results from it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

looks like your in trouble with that drive, I assume its a 1TB HD?
It shows on your pic 1TB available, .......bad news,.... run Etrecheck to verify you dont have WD software on your Mac
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/48217/etrecheck
EtreCheck is a simple little app to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. EtreCheck automatically removes any personally identifiable information from the output.
WD software is known to, on its own accord, repartition and corrupt drives under Mavericks, ...WD has confessed to their erorr in all this.

Similar Messages

External HDD Fine, But won't MOUNT.

Hi, I have been having this problem as of today. The drive appears in Disk Utility, everything seems to be fine, Verify and Repair turn out OK. But wont mount... Any suggestions? I really dont want to partition or format before maybe saving files first.
Have tried to mount on different enclosures, USB and Firewire.
Thanks!

looks like your in trouble with that drive, I assume its a 1TB HD?
It shows on your pic 1TB available, .......bad news,.... run Etrecheck to verify you dont have WD software on your Mac
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/48217/etrecheck
EtreCheck is a simple little app to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. EtreCheck automatically removes any personally identifiable information from the output.
WD software is known to, on its own accord, repartition and corrupt drives under Mavericks, ...WD has confessed to their erorr in all this.

Updated to Mavericks now my Toshiba External HDD 3.0 won't mount need help what to do

I recently updated to mavericks now my toshiba external hard drive wont connect and i have some important data need help to get drivers im assuming its the drivers but need help to locate the drivers

haha, so now i'm thinking. I'm learning the terminal as fast as i can but there are several lines of codes and commands in there that throws up red flags to me that i don't fully understand. It just looks fishy too me. It would be highly appreciated if someone could just check this out just to tell me that i don't need to worry about it. Or point me in the right direction. I just feel un easy about this. ha.

External Firewire drives power up, but won't mount.

I wanted to see if anyone else is having this problem. I recently upgraded my mom's laptop to OSX Lion after she experienced a lot of problems with Snow Leopard. All updates available from Software Update have been installed. Now 2 issues have arisen after the new install: 1) the FW 800 and 400 ports appear to be non-functional, and 2) the OS takes about 10 minutes to boot up to the desktop.
1) Regarding the FW ports: I have a couple external Firewire 800 hard drives that I use on other Macs so I know they're fully operational and mount without any issues. They're both 5400RPM drives that have been inserted into Macally external enclosures, and are of different capacities - one is 320GB and the other is 500GB. The enclosures offer FW 800, 400, USB 2.0 and mini-USB connectivity. But after upgrading the laptop I mentioned, neither of the drives will mount when using the FW 800 or 400 cables. They power up but won't mount, and they don't show up in the list in Disk Utility. However, the drives will power up and mount via USB.
I realize the laptop may have a hardware/port problem - but both 800 and 400 ports? Seems unlikely.
2) Any idea why it's taking the OS 10 minutes to boot up? I've shut down the laptop and rebooted it twice since the OS install, and both times took 10 minutes.
I may just install Lion on one of the hard drives, pull it and then pop it into the laptop to see if that makes any difference. Before I do that, can anyone recommend a hardware utility that can check the ports?
I welcome your suggestions.
Thank you.

Thanks for responding. Here's the info you requested. I'm not a systems guy so hopefully I've pasted in something that helps.
system.log report, after searching BOOT_TIME, here's one of the timestamps:
May 25 22:04:58 localhost bootlog[0]: BOOT_TIME 1337997898 0
Here's a chunk of the log after that timestamp:
May 25 22:05:00 localhost com.apple.launchd[1]: *** launchd[1] has started up. ***
May 25 22:05:13 localhost com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.powerd): Unknown value for key POSIXSpawnType: Interactive
May 25 22:05:13 localhost com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.sandboxd): Unknown value for key POSIXSpawnType: Interactive
May 25 22:05:18 localhost com.apple.pfctl[34]: No ALTQ support in kernel
May 25 22:05:18 localhost com.apple.pfctl[34]: ALTQ related functions disabled
May 25 22:05:18 localhost UserEventAgent[11]: starting CaptiveNetworkSupport as SystemEventAgent built May 25 2011 12:27:35
May 25 22:05:18 localhost UserEventAgent[11]: CaptiveNetworkSupport:CaptiveSCCopyWiFiDevices:388 WiFi Device Name == NULL
May 25 22:05:19 localhost com.apple.ucupdate.plist[28]: ucupdate: Checked 1 update, no match found.
May 25 22:06:14 localhost configd[14]: InterfaceNamer: timed out waiting for IOKit to quiesce
May 25 22:06:14 localhost configd[14]: Busy services :
May 25 22:06:14 localhost configd[14]:   MacBookPro3,1 [76967, 4375662836 ms]
May 25 22:06:15 localhost mDNSResponder[37]: mDNSResponder mDNSResponder-320.16 (Mar 17 2012 21:31:16) starting OSXVers 11
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: ERROR,Time,359690775.485,Function,"_Apple80211* CLWifiService::createApple80211()",Apple80211GetIfListCopy failed, error -3903 (Unknown error: -3903)
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: STACK,Time,359690775.485,1   locationd                           0x00000001077fe583 locationd + 624003
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: STACK,Time,359690775.485,2   locationd                           0x00000001077fe719 locationd + 624409
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: STACK,Time,359690775.485,3   libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff85f46c79 _dispatch_barrier_sync_f_invoke + 33
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: STACK,Time,359690775.485,4   locationd                           0x00000001077fe9b0 locationd + 625072
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: STACK,Time,359690775.485,5   locationd                           0x00000001077fea10 locationd + 625168
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: STACK,Time,359690775.485,6   libsystem_c.dylib                   0x00007fff85e96e06 pthread_once + 86
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: STACK,Time,359690775.485,7   locationd                           0x00000001077fea47 locationd + 625223
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: STACK,Time,359690775.485,8   locationd                           0x00000001077f33ac locationd + 578476
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: STACK,Time,359690775.485,9   locationd                           0x00000001077f353f locationd + 578879
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: STACK,Time,359690775.485,10 libsystem_c.dylib                   0x00007fff85e96e06 pthread_once + 86
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: STACK,Time,359690775.485,11 locationd                           0x00000001077f3509 locationd + 578825
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: STACK,Time,359690775.485,12 locationd                           0x00000001077b052a locationd + 304426
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: STACK,Time,359690775.485,13 locationd                           0x0000000107791653 locationd + 177747
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: STACK,Time,359690775.485,14 locationd                           0x0000000107791a08 locationd + 178696
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: STACK,Time,359690775.485,15 locationd                           0x00000001077921b2 locationd + 180658
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: STACK,Time,359690775.485,16 locationd                           0x00000001077c332c locationd + 381740
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: STACK,Time,359690775.485,17 locationd                           0x0000000107767fd8 locationd + 8152
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.locationd[40]: STACK,Time,359690775.485,18 ???                                 0x0000000000000001 0x0 + 1
May 25 22:06:15 localhost com.apple.usbmuxd[27]: usbmuxd-268.5 on Jan 5 2012 at 03:34:01, running 64 bit
May 25 22:06:15 localhost UserEventAgent[11]: CaptiveNetworkSupport:CaptiveSCCopyWiFiDevices:388 WiFi Device Name == NULL
May 25 22:06:15 localhost UserEventAgent[11]: ServermgrdRegistration cannot load config data
May 25 22:06:15 localhost UserEventAgent[11]: get_backup_share_points no AFP
May 25 22:06:15 localhost systemkeychain[59]: done file: /var/run/systemkeychaincheck.done
May 25 22:06:15 localhost configd[14]: ioctl(SIOCGIFCAP) failed: Device not configured
May 25 22:06:16: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
May 25 22:06:16 localhost mDNSResponder[37]: D2D_IPC: Loaded
May 25 22:06:16 localhost mDNSResponder[37]: D2DInitialize succeeded
If you want me to post the kernal log, I can do that next if nothing in here points anyone in the right direction. FYI - the system booted normally this morning after shutting it down overnight.

Ext HD recognized but won't mount

Trying to use my firewire/usb ext HD. It is recognized in disc utility and system profiler, but won't mount. I honestly can't remember whether the HD was disconnected or turned off before unmounting, but that's my suspicion. Tried connecting through usb---nothing. I've tried repairing with disc utility, but still nothing. I even had my neighbor plug it into his pc which wasn't any help (but nevermind that). Any advice?

Hi, Jason. Is the drive powered by its own AC adapter, or is it a bus-powered unit? If the latter, its power requirements may exceed what the bus can provide, and the solution will be to power it externally (or if there's no place on it to plug in an AC adapter, replace its enclosure with one that can be powered externally).
Spinning up but failing to mount is classic behavior for a bus-powered drive that exceeds the bus's power budget. That your drive won't mount when connected either through a FW or a USB port strongly indicates that it isn't your connecting cable(s) at fault, since the likelihood that both types of cable are bad is very small.
You don't say whether the drive was recognized by the PC you connected it to. Was it?
Has this drive ever mounted properly on your Mac's desktop, or is it a new drive that has never been formatted on a Mac? Is Disk Utility able to format it (as Mac OS Extended) or not?

EZ Quest Firewire 400 ext drive works in 10.4 (PPC) but won't mount in 10.6 (Intel)

I have an EZ Quest external FireWire 400 drive. Was working fine on my MDD Mac running OS X 10.4.11. NOW, when I hook it up to my iMac running OS X 10.6.8, it will not mount. Tried different ports. Tried device on and off at boot. Doesn't show up on desktop or in sidebar of finder window or in System Profiler. Drive powers up, but won't mount. Please help. Thanks. Dennis

I have the same problem. Two different EZQuest Quad interface drives suddenly won't mount on my 2010 iMac (Core Duo) via the firewire 800 or 400 ports. If I use a USB cable, both drives mount as normal, but I need the Firewire 800 ports to stream audio samples for Logic.
Both of these drives were working fine for over a year until I upgraded recently to 10.6.8 on the iMac and then tried to use one of the drives yesterday with a new 2012 MacBook Pro (10.7.4). The drive mounted once on the MacBook Pro, then disappeared and now will not mount on either the MacBook Pro or my iMac.
I tried resetting the PRAM and SMC on the iMac, but the drives still won't mount via firewire. The fact that both EZQuest drives still mount via USB indicates this is a firewire problem particular to Mac OS 10.6.8 and 10.7 rather than an external drive problem. It also seems that many people are experiencing this regardless of the external drive brand. Does anybody know how to fix this?

External Iomega Drive Partition won't mount

Hi:
I have a partition on my Iomega external drive that won't mount. The drive has 2 partitions. One I use for back up works fine. This other one is visiable but won't mount. I have run disk utitility and it says everything is fine but says it isn't journaled. It won't let me turn on journaling and won't let me get it mounted, what can I do?

Hi Dennis:
Thank you for your attempt at helping me. I opened Disk Utility and saw the greyed out "video Editing" partition, clicked on it and tried to mount it. It says it cannot mount the volume. I then clicked on the greyed out drive partition and clicked on disk first aid. It gives me the following screen.
Verify and Repair volume “Video Editing”
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Video Editing appears to be OK.
It just plain won't mount but I have in the past been able to see the contents inside and the other partition for which I use as back up for my iMac works just fine so I know the drive is working fine. I just cannot get this partition to mount.
Any other ideas?
Thank you,
Reid

Pismo, OSC 10.3.9, VST Media Bay superdrive sees but won't mount 1.4mb flop

This worked a while back, likely earlier version of X, just tried it and it sees but won't mount or format a floppy that works fine in a Mac Mini (10.4.11 with a Teac external floppy drive)
About to travel, would rather take the Pismo with the VST drive in the 2nd bay --anyone recognize this problem?
Here's what the Profile sees:
Name :
S,1 0 S
I
4 0 H l,p y
Type : Disk
Disk Identifier : disk1
Media Name : M L Media
Media Type : Generic
Connection Bus : ATAPI
Connection ID : Device 0
Device Tree : mac-io/media-bay@34/ata-3@20000/@0:0
Writable : Yes
Ejectable : Yes
Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed : No
Location : Internal
Total Capacity : 1.4 MB (1,464,832 Bytes)
Disk Number : 1
Partition Number : 0

Ok, using Yasu to flush all the caches, nothing else, and rebooting
-- did work for the VST ZIP module, which works, mounts a ZIP disk ok.
-- did not work for the HS-120 VST floppy module, but it's different.
Before it did not detect a floppy, just showed up on System Profiler as the drive being present.
Now, Disk Utility did detect a floppy as soon as I inserted one (as unreadable, though it's a Mac-formatted HD floppy; OSX (10.3.9) offered to format it). I tried letting it be formatted, it made all the right noises, but nothing changed. "Mount" is not an option. Tried DOS, no difference.
Well, one working VST module out of two isn't half bad in this case; I can stand traveling with an external USB floppy, they're small enough, and it's very handy to be able to use the VST ZIP where hauling around an old ZIP drive would be, in today's terms, just too much. But for a few extra backups, it's good to have.
Thanks! And I'll check back between trips in case anyone has other suggestions over time.

External HDD (for Time Machine backup) detected but won't mount on desktop

I have been using this external HDD as my Time Machine backup for many months now. No desktop display settings have been changed (I checked), but now it won't mount on my desktop. I suspect one of my kids was banging around on the keyboard, as they have done in the past, and renamed it. Unfortunately it appears they renamed it to NULL this time around. I didn't think that was possible, but I've plugged it into 3 different Windows and iMac machines, and in all cases the external drive gets detected, but then in all cases it doesn't mount. The Volume Label does appear blank in the device properties.
Is there a way to access my drive again to rename it? Will that allow it to mount again? Or is there a way to access it to just reformat the whole darn thing?
Thanks!
Tom

I don't think it's possible to have a null name for a drive so i suspect there is a problem with it. open disk utility. does it show the name of the drive? try repairing it (repair disk not permissions). if that doesn't help you can always reformat it with Disk Utility. select the whole drive ( model, not name) and use the partition tab.

External hard drive suddenly won't mount, but shows in Disk Utility.

Running OS 10.6.8... Disk Utility sees it and there's no issues when verified or repaired. The partition is grayed out and won't mount through Disk Utility. I've also tried mounting via Terminal, but same result. I've connected other drives, so I know it's not the wires or ports. When I turn the power on, it spins up and seems to be working properly. I don't have another mac to test it on. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Here's the info from Disk Utility:
Name :     BACKUP
    Type :     Volume
    Disk Identifier :     disk1s10
    Mount Point :     Not mounted
    File System :     Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
    Connection Bus :     FireWire
    Device Tree :     IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/RP05@1C,4/FWBR@0/FRWR@0/node@30e0f4e010a9d6/sbp-2@c000
    Writable :     Yes
    Universal Unique Identifier :     C3BC8998-F686-3A0F-A1AF-11260799EABA
    Capacity :     319.94 GB (319,937,773,568 Bytes)
    Owners Enabled :     No
    Can Turn Owners Off :     Yes
    Can Be Formatted :     Yes
    Bootable :     Yes
    Supports Journaling :     Yes
    Journaled :     No
    Disk Number :     1
    Partition Number :     10

You don't have a PowerMac if you have a Mac Pro. You don't have a PowerMac if you have Mac OS X 10.6. PowerMac is the name for the desktop professional Macs prior to mid-2006.   Two possibilities, the drive is dead, or the drive has a bad directory.   For a fee you can isolate either on my FAQ*:
http://www.macmaps.com/directoryfaq.html
* Links to some of my pages may give me compensation.

External Hard Drive Enclosure won't mount

Hi
I have a Western Digital Caviar WD3200JD 1TB SATA hard drive inside an external startech enclosure
http://www.startech.com/item-download/SAT3510U2B-35in-USB-to-SATA-External-Hard- Drive-Enclosure-with-One-Button-Backup.aspx
It won't mount on my mac, it won't recognise it in disk utility either
I mounts fine on a PC running Vista. I have formatted it as NTFS but it will still not shoe on my mac
Anything else I can try?
Thanks!

my 12 inch powerbook laptop body was no good, but the hard drive was. I had a powermac g4 tower with a bad harddrive. After researching, I found this site and I mounted the laptop harddrive into the desktop and boom! my old laptop drive booted up on the desktop powermac. here is the link. a 3 yr old can install this it is way too easy, plus it cost 99 Cents. way cheaper than buying an enclosure.
http://www.b2cshop24.com/en/hard-drive-ide-25-to-35-adapter-converter-for-laptop .html

External (Time Machine) HD won't mount

I have an external Hard Disk (CnMemory, 1.5 TB, USB 3.0), partitoned as 1TB MS-DOS-Fat, ½TB Mac OS Extended. The HD has been working for months as Time Backup for my MacBookPro, the other as Data Backup for Windows and OS/X (Maverick).
Suddenly the both partitions of the HD won't mount under OS/X. When connect to my MacBookPro (or iMac) both Volumes are visible in DiskUtil (Grey-out) and with the Mount-Point 'Not-Mounted'.
When I try to Verify the disk, the utility says it needs to be repaired. When I try to repair the disk:
What am I suppose to do now?

I have an update about this problem which solved my problem. I attached th Extern HD to my windows 8 computer. As metioned above I can reach the windows partition, not the OS/X partition.
After saving the windows data on another place, I tried to create one partition for windows. This failed on the format, which after 6 hours of no progress I canceled. and I safely removed the HD from the windows computer.
Now I was able to mount the computer and I made 2 partitions using my macBookPro.
Nice, but not everyone has a windows computer available. So my problem solved, but the real problem stays...

TM Drive no icon and won't mount/unmount

I have a Glyph GT050Q firewire drive that I'm using as a Time Machine backup drive. I used to have a time capsule but it died suddenly (like others have complained about). Anyway I decided to abandon Time Capsule.
The drive is attached directly to the MacBook Pro.
It works as a backup drive fine, it's just that Time Machine doesn't mount/unmount the drive and when it's being used for backup it doesn't get the custom Time Machine backup drive blue icon.
Is there a way to get this to work? It didn't work under OS 10.5 and I was sure when I upgraded to OX 10.6 that it would fix itself, but no luck.
By the way I've already tried trashing the TimeMachine.plist, that didn't do anything.
Is it only the Time Capsule that can mount/unmount? It's not the biggest of deals to have it on the desktop all day except that the system and certain applications periodically scan all drives which prevents the drive from sleeping. I have Time Machine Editor v 2.5.3 set to backup up every 6 hours.
Thanks

bcoughlin wrote:
I have a Glyph GT050Q firewire drive that I'm using as a Time Machine backup drive. I used to have a time capsule but it died suddenly (like others have complained about). Anyway I decided to abandon Time Capsule.
You might qualify for a free replacement. Check this out: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3351
It works as a backup drive fine, it's just that Time Machine doesn't mount/unmount the drive and when it's being used for backup it doesn't get the custom Time Machine backup drive blue icon.
That's correct; Time Machine doesn't mount and dismount directly-connected drives the way it does network drives. And it should have a green icon.
Is it only the Time Capsule that can mount/unmount? It's not the biggest of deals to have it on the desktop all day except that the system and certain applications periodically scan all drives which prevents the drive from sleeping.
That shouldn't be a problem. HDs are built to run 24/7.
I have Time Machine Editor v 2.5.3 set to backup up every 6 hours.
That's usually not a good idea, if you can avoid it. Local backups should be much faster than network, and won't be contending for your network connection. See #13 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

External drive and ipod won't mount after latest security update

I just downloaded the latest security update on my powerbook, and now my lacee external hard-drive won't mount. I ran disc permissions and still nothing. My ipod charges from the firewire port but doesn't mount either. The hard-drive mounts fine on my dome imac which appears to have the latest updates as well. Could it be a problem with the firewire port itself or something to do with the security update? Thanks for the help.

Your PowerBook is hurting my friend. Check "About this Mac" and see if the memory reported is the actual memory you have installed on the machine. I had a PB that had 1GB installed but the machine only read 256. Ended up needing a logic board replacement. Check http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303173 to see if it applies to you.
Unplug all devices from the PB, leaving only power connected.
If it everything seems cool, then you'll want to start up in "single user mode". Restart the PB and hold down the  + s (apple and s) keys until you get a black display with white characters. Once you get the command prompt signified by a # character. At that point type in the following at the prompt
fsck -yf
then hit your return key
As the system check your HD, notice any errors that are displayed. After it is done it will inform you of any modifications, or if it thinks everything is cool.
then again, type in
fsck -yf
then hit your return key
You'll want to have run the fsck -yf utility a total of 3 times. Hopefully at the end everything will be good (No errors) "* appears to be OK".
In any case, type in
reboot -n
then hit your return key
Your PB will reboot. After the OS has loaded, plug in your FW devices and see if they mount. Either way post back with results.
d

External Backup Disk Suddenly Won't Mount...

Tried to shut down, restart and repair the disk with Disk Utility...but it won't mount. Any suggestions? It's a WD 500GB external backup disk...I use it for Time Machine.
Thanks!

The only other thing that I can suggest at this point is to turn Time Machine off and try reseting the partition map scheme +(GUID Partition Table)+ and the format +(Mac OS Extended)+ again to see if it repairs the drive. Unfortunately that will erase all of your previous TM backups, but might get the drive working correctly again. Then if and when you get the drive working correctly go to the Time Machine Preference and reselect the drive to Use for Backup.

External HDD recognised but won't mount/unmount

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