Faulty external hard drive displays no files

I work at a school IT Helpdesk supporting Macbooks and a student brought in an external HD that appears to be missing files. The HD is a WD My Passport 500GB (FAT32 format). The students says the drive is always ejected properly. You can see the folders on the drive, but the Finder displays nothing in them - I get a spinning circle on the bottom bar. I run Disk Utility on the drive and it says that it couldn't unmount nor repair the disk (see attached image)
Before I decided to do what Disk Utility recommends - back up, format and restore - I opened up Grand Perspective and had it scan the drive to see what's on it. When it finished, the files were visible again. If I eject the drive and plug it back it in, the files are no longer visible. Disk Utility still has a problem with the drive, so I'm going to attempt to back it up first.
Does anyone know what's going on here? Has the entire drive corrupted?

Open Disk Utility on your internal hard drive, select the external hard drive, and run Disk Utility's "Repair Disk" routine. If it finds and repairs any problems, run it repeatedly until no further problems are reported. If problems are still reported after half a dozen Repair Disk run-throughs, you'll need DiskWarrior or TechTool Pro to rebuild the hard drive directory effectively.

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File in use error - copying from a faulty external hard drive

Hi,
I have a 750GB Western Digital external hard drive, which contains two partitions - (1) HDBACKUP - a Time Machine backup of my laptop drive, and (2) MEDIA - pictures including an Aperture library, and videos.
When I plug the drive in, only the MEDIA partition mounts. And I get an error saying Disk Utility cannot repair the drive and to backup the files as soon as I can, and reformat the drive.
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This did not work. I still get an error trying to repair with Disk Utility.
It gets to
Starting repair tool:
Checking file system
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy.
Checking extended attributes file.
The volume MEDIA could not be verified completely.
Volume repair complete.
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
So DiskUtility tells me to backup as many files as possible. However, when I try copying these files, I get a "File in use" error.

Trying to back up iPad to external hard drive, "iTunes library file cannot be saved. The disk you are attempting to use is full."

This issue is somewhat complex so I will try to explain it as clearly as I can. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
It all began when I kept getting popups from my iPad saying that I had not backed up since May. I realized that was pretty dangerous so I decided to finally try syncing it to iTunes, though I had avoided doing so for so long because I knew that when I tried there was no room on the computer. I then remembered that I have an external hard drive with plenty of storage space, so I got that out and set it up with a folder to move iTunes and the backup into.
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I am running Windows XP and the latest version of iTunes.
An additional but not as crucial issue:
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Short term, free up some disk space. Long term, move the library to a bigger drive.
tt2

External Hard Drive Not Showing Files

Hi. I'm really in a panic right now because school starts tomorrow and a problem occurred with my external hard drive today. Before I start, I would like to clarify that I use a Macbook Pro 15" (not Retina Display). Here is what happened:
Around 6 months ago, I was organizing the contents of my external hard drive into folders (i.e. "Movies" > "Romance," "Action," "Horror," etc.). In the midst of doing so, my laptop kind of froze and before I knew what was happening, the contents of the "Movies" folder was invisible. The "Movies" folder itself was still visible and accessible, but its contents were not. When I double-clicked the "Movies" folder, nothing would be shown. It was as if it was empty. The problem is that something was still taking up space on my external hard disk. When my friends asked to copy some of my movies onto their computers, I agreed and saw that they could access the "Movies" folder on their Mac laptops! This means that it was probably a problem with my Mac laptop. I decided to ignore it because I was still able to access the contents of the folder if I plugged in my external hard drive into my TV (it's an LG TV).
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The problem is caused by the third-party software you installed in order to make NTFS volumes writable. Refer to the developer for support. You might be able to repair the volume in Windows using the CHKDSK program.

External Hard Drive Partition, Erased Files. HELPPPP!

Something went wrong and has now "erased" all my files on my external hard drive (used for backing up with TM), after adding a partition second partition. I did not install anything onto the newly created partition as my focus was then distracted by the fact that all my data had now been erased.
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With the partitions split and my original data of 264GB still shaded in blue, I click apply.
A box prompts me to confirm partition, reading:
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Time Machine Error
The backup volume could not be found.
At this point I am panicking! I followed every step correctly and it clearly stated no files would be erased.
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Disk Description : WD My Passport 071A Media
Format : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Partition Map Scheme : GUID Partion Table.

JOHN YOU ARE A GENIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!
I AM USING DISK DRILL RIGHT NOW AND IT IS SCANNING AND LISTINIG ALL MY FILES! EXCUSE THE CAPITALS BUT I AM SO THANKFUL FOR YOUR HELP! AHHH
NEXT STEP IS TO RECOVER IT ONCE SCANNING IS DONE! IT IS LOOKING PROMISING AS I AM LISTENING TO THE MUSIC FOUND ON MY HARD DRIVE WHILE SCANNING IS TAKING PLACE
THANK YOU SOOO MUCH!!!!!!!!!

How do I find my external hard drive and move files?

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AS you drag files to an external drive, a little Plus sign + will appear to indicate the files will be copied.
You need to delete some files ASAP. Best to have greater than 2gig of free space. Many posters to these forums state that you need much more free space: 5 gig to 10 gig or 10 percent of you hd size.
(0)
Be careful when deleting files. A lot of people have trashed their system when deleting things. Place things in trash. Reboot & run your applications. Empty trash.
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(1)
Run
OmniDiskSweeper
"The simple, fast way to save disk space"
OmniDiskSweeper is now free!
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/download/
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(2)
This will save you a gig of space.
Monolingual is a program for removing unnecessary language resources from Mac OS X,in order to reclaim several hundred megabytes of disk space. It requires at least Mac OS X 10.3.9 (Panther) and also works on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). It worked for me on 10.4
http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/
A detailed write-up on how to use Monolingual:
http://www.jklstudios.com/misc/monolingual.html
(3)
These pages have some hints on freeing up space:
http://thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html

I just bought an external hard drive. What files should I back up?

I just bought a 60gig external hard drive and I wanted to know what files should I back up?

The easiest is to drag /Users/<yourhomefoldername> to the backup drive.
Only the files you've created can't be replaced. The rest is on CDs, DVDs, or can be purchased again if need be.
I don't bother with clones because there's always the possibility of trouble down the line if you have to restore from one. (Something could be wrong with the clone, or it could be altered if you have to boot from it.) Why take the chance, when the OS and apps are expendable? And, if you don't test that the clone is good (by restoring to a blank drive), you're just fooling yourself as to its viability.
If the internal drive dies, you take the time to install a new one, load up OS and applications, then copy your home folder back. So your computer will be unusable for a half-day---big deal. This doesn't happen every day.
The main thing is that you've backed up your home folder.

Itunes & external hard drive questions "original file could not be found"

I recently got my first apple, a Powerbook G4, and I am trying to figure out how to store and access my music files that are on my external hard drive. I have some music stored on my laptop and the majority of it on the hard drive. I can play the files on my computer's hard drive(itunes finds them), but the files on the external hard drive will not play, unless i seek it out manually. The message says "the song could not be played because the original file couldn't be found. Would u like to locate it" My question is how to get the files in my library to play when they are stored on my external hard drive. Any advice would be appreciated.

There's something missing in your explanation. If you're getting the "original file..." message, that would indicate that you may have had all your music files on your laptop drive at one point and them moved some of them to the external drive without using the proper procedure.
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Can I connect an externa hard drive and access files from 2 or more computers wirelessly?

Is there a way to connect an external hard drive to my linksys modem and access the files wirelessly by 2 or more computers?
I have a wireless G wrt54G modem working on windows XP a desktop and laptop on my home system. I have a WD “my book” external hard drive with a usb interface. My modem does not have a USB interface.
At work I also have 4 laptops using XP and vista and looking to have them all access an external hard drive and printers. I have not selected a hard drive for the work system.
If yes can I add 2 or more printers and print form all connected computers?
If yes, is it possible to access the files of the external hard drive (home system) via the internet?
Thanks in advance for all your help

First, your WRT54G is a router, not a modem. Different function.
Yes, you can "connect an external hard drive... and access the files wirelessly by 2 or more computers," just not that external hard drive. You need one that supports network attachment, with an ethernet connection.
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The answer to your last question is maybe. Oh, it's definitely possible, but may require learning about static IP addresses, dynamic DNS, firewalls, port forwarding, file sharing...

Faulty external hard drive displays no files

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