"Extra" Internal Hard Drives won't mount - swap, /, and /home work.

Hello All,
*** I'm updating my post finally. Sorry it's so long, I'm not entirely sure what is and isn't relevant.
*** Also I think it's a mix up with RAID causing the issue, as I'll address below, but in case I'm wrong I wanted to include the other information that came to mind before I noticed the RAID issue (because the RAID issue doesn't make a lot of sense to me).
First off, I'm running Arch64 and KDE4 with my system up to date. Also I have Gamin installed and not FAM. I use ReiserFS on all of my partitions and drives.
I have six hard drives in my computer, all of which are SATA drives. One is a WD 150GB Raptor with my swap, /, and /home partitions on it, the other five are for extra storage on what I call my media-server (they mount to /media/media-server/1 ,2 ,and so on). They only have one partition each. Of those five the first (/media/media-server/1) is a WD 1TB drive, the other four are WD 500GB drives of identical model.
All of the Raptor's patitions, swap, /, and /home mount just fine.
On top of that the 1TB drive mounts just fine. But the four 500GB drives will not mount at all. They show up in Dolphin, Disk Utility, KwikDisk, KDiskFree, and Partition Manager. However, their size is not shown and/or marked N/A, except in Partition Manager, where their size is shown. They are not seen by 'df'.
Output from 'df':
df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 10M 308K 9.7M 4% /dev
/dev/sda2 25G 7.7G 17G 32% /
none 4.0G 0 4.0G 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda3 112G 90G 22G 81% /home
/dev/sdb1 932G 919G 13G 99% /media/media-server/1
*** As for removable media, it's being a bit odd. When I first wrote this post removable media, specifically USB flash drives and SD media cards mounted fine. A while after that they'd show up in Device Notifier, but wouldn't mount. Just a little while ago they wouldn't show up in Device Notifier and wouldn't mount. Now they show up fine and mount fine again. This is possibly unrelated, I'm not sure.
Depending on what method I try to mount my hard drives I either get an 'only root can mount that' error or else a HAL drive busy or already mounted error, followed by a 'drive is not mounted' error when I use umount to double check.
*** Permissions are working better now , Dolphin isn't giving me the 'only root can mount' errors anymore. Still can't mount the drives though.
All of this output is from when the drives are listed in /etc/fstab:
Konsole output:
mount /dev/sdf1
mount: only root can mount /dev/sdf1 on /media/media-server/5
sudo mount /dev/sdf1
mount: /dev/sdf1 already mounted or /media/media-server/5 busy
umount /dev/sdf1
umount: /dev/sdf1 is not mounted (according to mtab)
sudo umount /dev/sdf1
umount: /dev/sdf1: not mounted
Dolphin output:
An error occurred while accessing 'MediaServer5', the system responded: org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.PermissionDenied: Device /dev/sdf1 is listed in /etc/fstab. Refusing to mount.
Device Notifier output (pops up when I try to mount the drives in Dolphin):
org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.PermissionDenied: Device /dev/sdf1 is listed in /etc/fstab. Refusing to mount.
Partition Manager:
The file system on partition /dev/sdf1 could not be mounted.
Details
==========================================================================================
Command: mount -v /dev/sdf1 /media/media-server/5
==========================================================================================
mount: /dev/sdf1 already mounted or /media/media-server/5 busy
mount: you didn't specify a filesystem type for /dev/sdf1
I will try type reiserfs
At boot, when the daemons are starting I get:
mount: /dev/sdc1 already mounted or /media/media-server/2 busy
mount: /dev/sdd1 already mounted or /media/media-server/3 busy
mount: /dev/sde1 already mounted or /media/media-server/4 busy
mount: /dev/sdf1 already mounted or /media/media-server/5 busy
This is from when the drives are not listed in /etc/fstab:
Dolphin output:
An error occurred while accessing 'MediaServer5', the system responded: org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.InterfaceLocked: The enclosing drive for the volume is locked
Device Notifier output (pops up when I try to mount the drives in Dolphin):
An error occurred while accessing 'MediaServer5', the system responded: org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.InterfaceLocked: The enclosing drive for the volume is locked
I have tried listing (with the UUID method and the /dev method) and not listing the drives in /etc/fstab, and I have 'hal' and 'dbus' daemons in /etc/rc.conf (and I've tried using only the hal daemon and not the dbus in /etc/rc.conf). I've also tried not listing 'hal', 'dbus', and 'kdm' and only booting to terminal and then mounting the drives manually, that doesn't work either.
Here is my /etc/fstab (back to using UUID's):
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
none /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
UUID=699cdd5e-3f4a-4b85-8dcb-5d00c00c94a9 swap swap defaults 0 0
UUID=ce94e7a3-3e07-41e5-90d7-1116e5da3121 / reiserfs defaults 0 0
UUID=a1dce435-df90-4f0d-892c-61ff3ea0c8d1 /home reiserfs defaults 0 0
## Media-Server
# media-server/1
UUID=81998a75-f887-4a35-b3fa-e159190f25a3 /media/media-server/1 reiserfs defaults 0 0
#/dev/sdb1 /media/media-server/1 reiserfs defaults 0 0
# media-server/2
UUID=8cdd114a-b190-44f6-9240-1910a5d048f7 /media/media-server/2 reiserfs defaults 0 0
#/dev/sdc1 /media/media-server/2 reiserfs defaults 0 0
# media-server/3
UUID=59164593-b56d-4c49-8837-277b3c392dfb /media/media-server/3 reiserfs defaults 0 0
#/dev/sdd1 /media/media-server/3 reiserfs defaults 0 0
# media-server/4
UUID=ba6007bd-1e36-431c-85f4-857c83845c86 /media/media-server/4 reiserfs defaults 0 0
#/dev/sde1 /media/media-server/4 reiserfs defaults 0 0
# media-server/5
UUID=6fab5364-1acb-4ba3-9f83-bb171a6d398a /media/media-server/5 reiserfs defaults 0 0
#/dev/sdf1 /media/media-server/5 reiserfs defaults 0 0
## VirtualBox USB
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs auto,busgid=108,busmode=0775,devgid=108,devmode=0664 0 0
Here's the daemons line from /etc/rc.conf:
DAEMONS=(syslog-ng !dbus hal network netfs crond wicd openntpd sshd avahi-daemon avahi-dnsconfd samba alsa mysqld lircd mythbackend !mpd !sensors !sensord !fancontrol cups keytouch kdm)
Also, /etc/mtab because only the first media-server drive is listed in it (the one that does mount):
proc /proc proc rw,relatime 0 0
sys /sys sysfs rw,relatime 0 0
udev /dev devtmpfs rw,nosuid,relatime,size=10240k,nr_inodes=1014438,mode=755 0 0
/dev/sda2 / reiserfs rw,relatime 0 0
fusectl /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw,relatime 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts rw 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
/dev/sda3 /home reiserfs rw 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /media/media-server/1 reiserfs rw 0 0
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw,busgid=108,busmode=0775,devgid=108,devmode=0664 0 0
I attempted to add the other drives to /etc/mtab but they get overwritten upon a reboot. I've drived mounting the drives from konsole and dolphin.
All my drives used to work. At one point I had Chakra installed and had this issue after an update, however after thinking about it the problem may have actually started after the power flashed on and off here. I couldn't fix it so I installed Arch64 and KDE4 (the normal KDE from the Arch repos, not KDEMod) thinking maybe it was a Chakra specific issue. That fixed it at the time. It later happened on my Arch install. I reinstalled Arch again and the issue was gone. However the issue is back. Again I think it was after a power outage/flash but it was also after an update that included a kernel update. Best I can remember each time it's happened has been after a kernel update and power flash. So I can't say for sure which is the cause.
Oddly though if I boot from a live disc (in my case a Chakra Live DVD) I can mount and access all of the drives just fine.
Another oddity, is that in 'Disk Utility' (palimpsest) there is a 1.5TB RAID-5 array listed. The only thing I can figure is that that is what is making the individual drives busy.
Here's a screenshot from Disk Utility of the RAID-5 array:
http://theavataroftime.com/sites/defaul … enshot.png
After talking to a friend I remembered that quite a while back (over a year) we had messed around trying to setup a RAID array and dual boot WindowsXP. However, we never could get it working quite right, not even just in Linux without dual booting. I really can't say what all we did/tried, it's been too long. I realize that's not much help but...
Anyway I'm pretty certain I deleted everything RAID related at the time and turned it off. However I must be mistaken or I guess the array wouldn't be showing up.
I apologize, I really know nothing about RAID or RAID controllers. I do have an onboard RAID controller, but it's not a full fledged hardware RAID controller. It's onboard, but doesn't have it's on proccessor like good hardware RAID would. Or that's the way I understand it. Perhaps 'hybrid' is the proper term?
I checked in BIOS and my onboard RAID controller is off.
I take it that my attempts at setting up a RAID array before are still in the MBR (on that note I use GRUB and have never used LILO)? That's the only place I can think of that any leftover RAID configurations wouldn't have been wiped during reinstalling and reformatting the drives and partitions? I've reformatted my drives completely and changed the size of swap, /, and /home on several occasions since then, as well as formatting the media-server drives to ReiserFS (not sure what FS I was using when trying to setup RAID before. Perhaps FAT32 since I was trying to dual boot).
I clicked the stop array button in Disk utility, and then all the options except start array went away. Then I clicked start, and instead of my four media-server drives being listed at the side of Dolphin there was one 1.4TB drive. I rebooted and now it's back to the 4 500GB media-server drives.
I'm worried about losing a bunch of data, so I'm hesitant to start experimenting. How should I go about getting rid of the remnants of the RAID array safely?
Also here's a screenshot of MediaServer5 from Disk Utility. The other 500GB drives have the same info minus the names and labels of course:
http://theavataroftime.com/sites/defaul … enshot.png
*** I had forgotten about dmesg output. It's quite long so instead of copying it, here's a link to it:
http://theavataroftime.com/sites/defaul … /dmesg.txt
Thanks for advice on the matter.
Last edited by The Avatar of Time (2010-10-07 08:27:06)

Thanks for the reply.
Here is my output from the commands you suggested:
fuser -v -m /media/media-server/2
USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
/media/media-server/2:
root kernel mount /
theavataroftime 2518 fr.e. startkde
theavataroftime 2561 Frce. gpg-agent
theavataroftime 2575 .rce. dbus-launch
theavataroftime 2576 .rce. dbus-daemon
theavataroftime 2584 Fr.e. kdeinit4
theavataroftime 2585 Fr.e. klauncher
theavataroftime 2587 fr.e. kded4
theavataroftime 2592 .r.e. kglobalaccel
theavataroftime 2605 .r.e. kwrapper4
theavataroftime 2613 Fr.e. ksmserver
theavataroftime 2622 .r.e. kwin
theavataroftime 2656 fr.e. knotify4
theavataroftime 2658 fr.e. plasma-desktop
theavataroftime 2662 .rce. kuiserver
theavataroftime 2665 .r.e. akonadi_control
theavataroftime 2667 .r.e. akonadiserver
theavataroftime 2670 Fr.e. mysqld
theavataroftime 2714 .r.e. akonadi_contact
theavataroftime 2715 .r.e. akonadi_contact
theavataroftime 2716 .r.e. akonadi_ical_re
theavataroftime 2717 .r.e. akonadi_ical_re
theavataroftime 2718 .r.e. akonadi_maildir
theavataroftime 2719 .r.e. akonadi_maildis
theavataroftime 2720 .r.e. akonadi_nepomuk
theavataroftime 2721 .r.e. akonadi_vcard_r
theavataroftime 2739 .r.e. nepomukserver
theavataroftime 2741 .r.e. nepomukservices
theavataroftime 2747 .r.e. kaccess
theavataroftime 2759 fr.e. krunner
theavataroftime 2765 Fr.e. virtuoso-t
theavataroftime 2772 Fr.e. kio_http_cache_
theavataroftime 2774 .r.e. kmix
theavataroftime 2782 Fr.e. konsole
theavataroftime 2785 .r.e. kjots
theavataroftime 2790 .r.e. bash
theavataroftime 2807 .r.e. kalarm
theavataroftime 2809 fr.e. kopete
theavataroftime 2812 .r.e. polkit-kde-auth
theavataroftime 2815 .r.e. kwin
theavataroftime 2821 .r.e. dolphin
theavataroftime 2822 Fr.e. firefox
theavataroftime 2834 .r.e. kwalletd
theavataroftime 2839 .r.e. kwalletmanager
theavataroftime 2842 Frce. gconfd-2
theavataroftime 2850 .r.e. python
theavataroftime 2854 .rce. wicd-client
theavataroftime 2858 .r.e. klipper
theavataroftime 2861 .r.e. nepomukservices
theavataroftime 2862 .r.e. nepomukservices
theavataroftime 2865 .r.e. nepomukservices
theavataroftime 2867 .r.e. nepomukservices
theavataroftime 2868 .r.e. nepomukservices
theavataroftime 2869 .r.e. nepomukservices
theavataroftime 2870 .r.e. nepomukservices
theavataroftime 2871 .r.e. korgac
theavataroftime 2883 fr.e. kmozillahelper
theavataroftime 2979 .r.e. amarokapp
theavataroftime 2989 .r.e. plugin-containe
theavataroftime 3010 .r.e. npviewer.bin
theavataroftime 3048 Fr.e. kdeinit
theavataroftime 3051 Fr.e. dcopserver
theavataroftime 3053 Fr.e. klauncher
theavataroftime 3055 fr.e. kded
theavataroftime 3075 .r.e. ruby
theavataroftime 3081 fr.e. kio_file
theavataroftime 15311 .r.e. kio_http
theavataroftime 15312 .r.e. kio_http
theavataroftime 15313 .r.e. kio_http
theavataroftime 15314 .r.e. kio_http
theavataroftime 15315 .r.e. kio_http
theavataroftime 15316 .r.e. kio_http
fuser -v -m /dev/sdb1
USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
/dev/sdb1: root kernel mount /media/media-server/1
I ran 'fsck.reiserfs --check' one /dev/sdf1, which is the /media/media-server/5 hard drive.
Here are the results:
fsck.reiserfs --check /dev/sdf1
reiserfsck 3.6.21 (2009 www.namesys.com)
** If you are using the latest reiserfsprogs and it fails **
** please email bug reports to [email protected], **
** providing as much information as possible -- your **
** hardware, kernel, patches, settings, all reiserfsck **
** messages (including version), the reiserfsck logfile, **
** check the syslog file for any related information. **
** If you would like advice on using this program, support **
** is available for $25 at www.namesys.com/support.html. **
Will read-only check consistency of the filesystem on /dev/sdf1
Will put log info to 'stdout'
Do you want to run this program?[N/Yes] (note need to type Yes if you do):Yes
reiserfsck --check started at Mon Sep 27 19:21:20 2010
Replaying journal: Done.
Reiserfs journal '/dev/sdf1' in blocks [18..8211]: 0 transactions replayed
Checking internal tree.. finished
Comparing bitmaps..finished
Checking Semantic tree:
finished
No corruptions found
There are on the filesystem:
Leaves 77863
Internal nodes 474
Directories 2856
Other files 18718
Data block pointers 77184421 (0 of them are zero)
Safe links 0
reiserfsck finished at Mon Sep 27 19:29:03 2010
Also I just used Partition Manager to check /media/media-server/5 as well.
Check and repair partition '/dev/sdf1' (465.76 GiB, reiser)
Job: Check file system on partition '/dev/sdf1'
Command: fsck.reiserfs --fix-fixable -q -y /dev/sdf1
reiserfsck 3.6.21 (2009 www.namesys.com)
** If you are using the latest reiserfsprogs and it fails **
** please email bug reports to [email protected], **
** providing as much information as possible -- your **
** hardware, kernel, patches, settings, all reiserfsck **
** messages (including version), the reiserfsck logfile, **
** check the syslog file for any related information. **
** If you would like advice on using this program, support **
** is available for $25 at www.namesys.com/support.html. **
Will check consistency of the filesystem on /dev/sdf1
and will fix what can be fixed without --rebuild-tree
Will put log info to 'stdout'
reiserfsck --fix-fixable started at Wed Oct 6 22:29:02 2010
Replaying journal: Replaying journal: Done.
Reiserfs journal '/dev/sdf1' in blocks [18..8211]: 0 transactions replayed
Checking internal tree..
***I'm cutting most of this out, it's insanely long: \|/-\|/-\|finished
Comparing bitmaps..Bad nodes were found, Semantic pass skipped
3 found corruptions can be fixed only when running with --rebuild-tree
reiserfsck finished at Wed Oct 6 22:36:43 2010
block 32772: The level of the node (48287) is not correct, (1) expected
the problem in the internal node occured (32772), whole subtree is skipped
block 262149: The level of the node (28423) is not correct, (1) expected
the problem in the internal node occured (262149), whole subtree is skipped
block 11326: The level of the node (63701) is not correct, (1) expected
the problem in the internal node occured (11326), whole subtree is skipped
vpf-10630: The on-disk and the correct bitmaps differs. Will be fixed later.
Check file system on partition '/dev/sdf1': Error
Check and repair partition '/dev/sdf1' (465.76 GiB, reiser): Error
Thanks for the advice.
Last edited by The Avatar of Time (2010-10-07 05:53:05)

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    No, there are never any errors like that. Also, I have upgraded the Mac OS from 10.5 to 10.6.8. That did nothing. I backed up my Users = Christina folders to a good, 15 year old Firewire 800 La Cie 1 TB  external hard drive. I also tested using the Apple Hardware test, which showed no problems, and Alsoft's Disk Warrior and defragged, and fixed a very minor issure re directory count, probably resulting from many improper shutdowns lately due to frozen spinning beach balls. None of these procedures alleviated the issues, and I still have the same issues: mainly that super-frequent spinning beach ball. Do you think I ought to install that new RAM sitting here finally? Perhaps it is a lack of RAM??I only have 2 lousy GB's of RAM after all! Thank you so very much for a reply.
    Message was edited by: Flamingcreatures

  • 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 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

  • Internal hard drive does not mount in disk utility

    My internal hard drive no longer mounts in Disk Utility. It is grayed out. I have extraordinarily frequent spinning beach ball/freezes, in Safari or Apple Mail. The most recent symptom: upon rebooting or just starting up, I see flashing black on the display. This has been occuring for more than six months. Of course, I have made total and frequent backup's. I bought new RAM, but have not yet installed it, and I susect this might help. I have done repeted troubleshooting many times each:  Apple's Disk Doctor, Repaired Permissions, Reinstalled the Mac OS, safe boot, Alsoft's Disk Warrior, Apple's longer Harware Test, etc. I have worked as a new user, too. All tests done report that all is well. What od you thnk the problem is? Must I drive 1.5 hrs. each way to the Genius Bar at my nearest Apple Store? Might I try to erase the hard drive as a fix? I hate to do this, only as a last resort, as it is so time-consuming. Should I just update my Mac OS? Please advise, out there, if anyone can offer any advice, I would be greatly appreciative.

    The list of issues you posted probably would not get shorter if you attempt to 'upgrade them' away, as usually that kind of effort is not effective yet may expose more of the same problems while not necessarily revealing the original weakness. Another OS X installed over a set of problems seldom helps.
    How full is the hard disk drive? If it is too full, or has been very busy in use several years, it may be time to replace the HDD and perhaps put a larger capacity one in the computer. And if the main computer hardware checks out OK (tested under a variety of duration and stress tests) then also consider a RAM upgrade if the device is not already at the maximum capacity.
    When was the last time the hard disk drive was devoid of content, maybe wiped -- erased and reformatted by a third party disk utility or have a utility overwrite the entire HDD with zeros? This used to be a common tech service in the course of a major effort to restore a Mac. Or Defragment?
    If you can do the latter, this could help resolve bad sectors and remove old data or corruption on the hard drive. Or get a new HDD and before committing a new OS X install & apps to it (or a re-clone of a complete backup) test the drive and be sure it is ready for use. Not all new drives are perfectly ready; some need to get exercise first.
    I'd bet on a new hard disk drive of larger capacity (also note spin RPM rate and data speeds) and a full RAM upgrade.
    If you have a backup clone on an external hard disk drive (in a boot-capable enclosure) you could really go to town and before you erase the main/only hard drive, make a backup clone and test its ability to boot the Mac. Or put the old drive and content in a suitable boot capable enclosure of the kind with its own power supply, and deal with it later.
    Then consider a later version OS X -- whatever most recent version that model can support... {edited}
    Good luck & happy computing!

  • Lacie Hard Drives won't mount

    My two Lacie hard drives won't mount on my G5 running Tiger. They were fine on my G4 iMac running Panther. I've tried using the Lacie Update Tool but the drives aren't recognised. I've tested the firewire cables on another drive that works and they're fine, so it's not cables.
    Both drives power up okay and whir into action, but just aren't talking to the G5.
    Lacie d2 HD 80GB FW DV
    Lacie 40GB (no model number, "DESIGN BY F.A.PORSCHE", no model number).
    Any ideas much appreciated.

    Reply
    This happened to me with a LaCie external drive as well.
    The problem is that LaCie formats the drives as PC-based
    and not Mac Extended, so unless you reformatted the
    drives to Mac when you started using them, your access
    to them on any Mac may result in a failure to mount.
    Once that happens retrieval of data is made more difficult
    because of this formatting incongruity.
    There is no way you can get the data once your G4 quits
    mounting them. If you can get the data off of the drives,
    back it up and then reformat the drives using Mac's Disc
    Utility. Then you can reload the data and I suspect all of
    your Macs will then mount the drives via Firewire.
    Good Luck!
    My two Lacie hard drives won't mount on my G5 running
    Tiger. They were fine on my G4 iMac running Panther.
    I've tried using the Lacie Update Tool but the drives
    aren't recognized. I've tested the firewire cables on
    another drive that works and they're fine, so it's
    not cables.
    iBook G4   Mac OS X (10.4.4)  

  • Turning off an extra internal hard drive

    I have a extra internal hard drive via a DataDoubler, and I was wondering if it was possible to turn the extra drive off whenever I'm not using it? I only have music, movies, and other large files on it (to keep them off my SSD), and I don't want it to just sit there spinning when I'm not using it (wasting my battery power).

    Are your prefs configured to spin down drives when not in use?
    Is Spotlight set to index it or ignore?
    You can use AppleScript to unmount the drive if you like...

  • Firewire hard drive won't mount - Filesystem verify or repair failed.

    Hi all - over the last day my lacie hard drive won't mount - i have tried it on various computers with the same result
    disk utility can see it but won't mount or repair it reporting the following error
    Filesystem verify or repair failed.
    any help would be appreciated
    best
    darren/uk

    Try Disk Utility first. It's in your Applications/Utilities folder.
    You'll want to select the disk in question, then +Repair Disk+ (not Permissions). This actually repairs the +File System+ that's on the disk.
    If that works, you're ok, unless it begins happening frequently. Then you need to save up for a new one.
    If DU can't fix it, then one of the others might. Disk Warrior is about $100, and many people here say it's the best. There are others for less money, but there's no guarantee that any of them will succeed.
    You can also try just erasing it, and choose +Security Options,+ then +Zero Out Data.+ If that fails, or you have more problems with the drive, you need a new one.

  • Internal Hard Drive Won't Load

    Specs:
    iMac Mid 2007 OSC 10.9.4
    Processor: 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
    Memory: 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
    500 GB Hard Drive
    So, my hard drive began acting funky about a year ago (would freeze at startup or freeze when trying to click on the Desktop). I restarted my iMac and loaded the installation DVD, using a USB-Hard Drive as my Startup Disk (I know, I know...). Ever since this issue I've just booted from this hard drive and made do with the reduction in speed from using a USB-connected hard drive, as there weren't any significant problems from going about this way.
    Lately, though, applications have become significantly slower, to the point where loading more than one tab on Safari or switching from App to App causes the rainbow wheel to spin for a few seconds, forcing me to finally turn to you guys to see if you all could provide any advice.
    I tried all the Safe Boot options/resetting the PRAM (at least, I think I've tried them all) and none seem to produce any worthwhile results. Even inserting the Install Disk didn't seem to help. I'm able to view my internal hard drive, launch applications from it, and so forth, but something seems to be corrupted/wrong with it being my Startup Disk.
    I've tried Disk Utility to see the problem, and this is what comes up:
    When Repairing Disk Permissions: nothing comes up...'Permissions repair complete'.
    When Repairing Disk: "Error: Live file system is not supported".
    My initial question (which will probably be revised once someone redirects me to what my main issue is) would be: Would I be able to completely erase my internal hard drive, repartition it, then clone my USB drive to this? Would that work the way I'd think it would? Or is the problem deeper than that?
    Thank you.

    The smart status is just the first thing to check, if you think there could be an issue with a drive. What I would do, if it was my computer. I would make sure all data I wanted was off the internal drive. I would then format the internal drive, and create a new partition. Then put a clean system on the internal drive. Use migration assistant to move the users, data and applications form the USB drive you have been using.
    If I got errors, crashing or very slow functionality from the internal drive, I would look at replacing the drive.

  • I've lost the use of Appleworks in 10.9.2. Is it possible to partition the internal hard drive of my MacBook Pro and install an older Mac OS (10.6.8) on the second partition with OS 10.9.2 on the other?

    I've lost the use of Appleworks by upgrading to 10.9.2.
    Is it possible to partition the internal hard drive of my MacBook Pro and install an older Mac OS (10.6.8) on the second partition with OS 10.9.2 on the other? I'd like to be able to boot to the older OS when I need Appleworks and  few other applications that aren't available on OS 10.9.2.
    Any suggestions?
    Thank you for your help.

    Hello again, WZZZ,
    Here's an update. I was successful in creating two partitions on my internal drive, and in installing OS 10.6.6 on the second partition, as per your guidence. I now have it up to 10.6.8 with all the security updates and AppleWorks. A great thing.
    Some thoughts:
    • The partitioning had one hitch; it failed at first. But once I "repaired" the disc with Disc Utility the partitioning went thru.
    • The partitioning took a long time in 'resizing the partition.' A few hours I think it was. Lots of progress bar watching.
    • If I had it to do again, I'd size the two partitions differently. My original data was occupying about 230 Gb of the 320 Gb disc. I made the new partitions share the space, about 230 and 75Gb. That left very little available space for the main disc. I ought to have put some breathing room in there. As it is, it's an incentive to clean up all those files, especially all those iTunes files. I now have about 10% of available space there and mean to continue deleting.
    So, all in all a good project that got me where I wanted to go. Thank you for your help.
    Appreciatively,
    wallah

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