Finder won't run/Hard Drive won't mount on restart!!?!

Hey all.
Restarted my Powerbook G4 on OSX 10.4.10 yesterday, and for some reason, the Finder does not run, and the HardDrive icon does not appear. My top bar appears partially, and my Dock appears with all my programs, but the desktop is empty!?!
Some of the programs on the Dock work (hence the internet). and the top bar becomes full when a program opens...but I can't access the Harddrive! Ahhh! There were some files on the desktop and on my HD that I needed, so surprisingly I was able to open up Acrobat, hit open file, and locate and open these files from the desktop or HD, and then save them to a USB drive....but why doesn't my finder work or harddrive mount??
I've zapped the P ram and nothing was fixed, I ran disk utility from my OSX CD...no problems. ***?? I also read somewhere about a divx problem with 10.5...but I ran that fix code in terminal....and it said "no such file or directory"...so it's not a DivX problem
Please help....I need my PB for work ASAP!!
Any suggestions?
Thanks guys....love the site!

Hi Johnny88!
What size is the Hard Drive, and how much space is available?
How much of the 512 MB RAM, is original, and how much is added?
What peripherals do you have connected? A keyboard, mouse, printer, external drive or modem, router, etc?
Insufficient available space, can cause this issue, as well as system corruption, and possible data loss.
Depending on Mac system usage habits, it is a general recommendation, to keep 10% to as much as 20%, of the Total capacity, available at all times.
More info here Problems From Insufficient .... Free Hard Disk Space, authored by Dr Smoke.
Suggestions for Freeing Space On Your Mac OS X Startup Disk, authored by Dr Smoke.
Is the Mac shutdown overnight, or does it run 24/7?
Have you ever run any routine Maintenance procedures?
If you turn the PowerBook off nightly, the Background Maintenance Tasks, are never run.
These can also be run, using a Third-Party utility, or manually using Terminal, to run the CRON Commands.
I use MacJanitor, when necessary.
INSTRUCTIONS TO RUN CRON MANUAL COMMANDS
Quit all applications/programs.
Navigate to HD > Applications > Utilities.
Double click on Terminal, to open.
At the prompt, type:
sudo periodic daily
Press Return.
Enter your Admin password when prompted, then press Return.
This will execute the daily script that is sheduled to run every night.
When completed, repeat this procedure, but change the command to:
sudo periodic weekly
This one rebuilds a database or two, and usually takes somewhat longer to complete. It is scheduled to run once a week.
Repeat again, with command:
sudo periodic monthly
Or they can all be run in one pass, which is preferable, with this command:
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
When the tasks complete, and return to the prompt, you may quit Terminal.
Restart the Mac, and run Repair Permissions.
TO REPAIR PERMISSIONS ON THE STARTUP DISK
1.Open Disk Utility, located in Applications/Utilities, and select the startup disk in the left column.
2.Click First Aid.
3.Click Verify Disk Permissions to test permissions or Repair Disk Permissions to test and repair permissions. (I never "Verify". Just run "Repair".)
When "Repair Permissions" is complete. Quit "Disk Utility".
ali b

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External Hard Drive won't mount on desktop!

Hey, guys.
I ran into a problem this morning that I've never ran into before and I wasn't sure where to write it but I thought this is best.
Here it goes...
Last night I had a power surge and when I restarted my computer, my external hard drive did not mount on my desktop. I than proceeded with restarting my computer, I relinked all my connections and I cant seem to get it fixed. I have a lot of material on my external drive that I dont have backed up (I know, a stupid move) anyways, I dont want to lose that information. Also, when I open up disk utility, the icon for my external drive is there and the partition I made for my external drive shows up also but the title of my partition for my external hard drive is not in bolded font. I tried to click the button to mount my external drive cause the specs tell me that it is not mounted but when I press the mount button, it does nothing. I than tried clicking the unmount button and than restart my computer and still nothing.
What problem am I facing and how can it be fixed?
Thanks.

Dear Jason,
Gary's advised is, IMHO, a very sound one.
The only thing I can think of about your problem, given the information you have provided us, is to run Disk Warrior on your external HD.
In fact, DW is particularly indicated in events, like:
"...you should run DiskWarrior when you suspect that there is directory damage on one of your disks. Directory damage can result in the disk not mounting (not appearing on the desktop when the computer is started), missing files or folders, an inability to move or copy files, or crashes when files are used...".
You could actually buy your copy of DW Licence on-line and download it directly onto your internal HD, starting from this "Information you must read before you make your purchase" page. A hardware copy of the software you have so purchased, will follow by postal service (or currier, if so you choose), shortly.
Follow all the instructions you will find in the download to install the DW software onto your main internal HD and then run it on your external hard drive.
DW has saved my data several times and in similar situations as you are experiencing. IMHO, you should seriously give it a try and, even in the unfortunate event it does not manage to solve your problem, it is one of those Mac OSX utilities which ANY Mac power user MUST have handy at all times.
So, no matter what, my opinion is that it is always well-spent-money those used to purchase your copy of DW: in the long run, you won't regret it.
In the event that even DW is unable to retrive your precious data, my suggestion is to contact Micro Com data recovery. It's going to cost you some money, but if you make a leaving out of the data you've lost on your external hard drive, it's going to be worth it.
All the best.
Costa

PowerMac G5 won't detect hard drives

This is an intermittent problem. I have a dual processor PowerMacG5 2GHz.
The computer won't boot up. Used disc utility to find out that no hard drive was detected. Thought hard drive was bad. Installed new hard drive. Installed Tiger. Rebooted. Computer won't boot, disc utility shows no hard drive.
Unplugged computer. Removed hard drive. Started disc utility from disk. Turned off machine. Unplugged. Installed hard drive.
Started up machine. Machine runs fine.
Now turned machine off and tried to restart again, now no hard drive detected again.
Redid unplugging and reinstallation of hard drives.
Now both hard drives works fine.
This problem can be repeated. I prefer not to ever turn off my machine again. Startup procedure with unplugging, reinstallation of hard drives is just a pain.
Anybody having a clue of what hard ware piece should be replaced?
Thank You

My original drive is a 160 GB Maxtor. This is the drive the machine couldn't start up with. The machine started with its sound, then the display just showed the ticking start up image. After a while the fans started to run very fast and then the machine shut down.
My new drive is a seagate BarracudaGreen 2TB. Both drives are SATA.
I have installed Tiger on the Seagate and is using the new drive as a start up drive.
I have seen the same identical problem with all different configurations. New or old drive, 1 or two drives don't seem to make a difference.
The machine runs great if it does start up.
Have any one of you guys seen if the problem goes away if I use an external firewire connected drive as a startup drive? I like this Mac machine and the programs I have on it and would like to be able to use it for a few more years.

USB external hard drive won't show up in Lion

My external USB hard drive won't show up in Finder, even though it's visible in both the Disk Utility, which says the drive is fine, and in Terminal.
How can I get it mounted? I have researched the issue and found no solution.It disappeared while I was downloading IOS6.
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I have a very similar issue. I have a seagate external usb drive 500 GB that is partitioned. One FAT 32 the other MAC OS Extended (Journaled). It has suddenly for no apparent reason stopped being able to mount the Mac OS volume. The FAT 32 vol. works fine. Disk Utility says that it is fine when I do a repair or verity etc. When I click on mount, it won't work. It says mount failed. Try running First Aid on the disk and then retry mounting. Same thing happens once that is done. ??????Any ideas?????

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
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My trusty G3 started up fine, however, the external HD was now
not showing up on the desktop as normal. I troubleshooted -by restarting,
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seagate -not much help . Seagate said to try the HD on another mac-which I did-
a G5 tower- same problem.
~
The External hard drive will show up in disk utility, but is grayed out.
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message 1: "a disk attempting to mount as unknown has failed verification or has failed to
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~
message 2- when unplugging and repluggin the usb in-and upon
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~
( I really need access to these files- and do not want to re-initialize the HD!!)
I ran Disk Utility /first aid "verify & repair , the following info came up:
Repairing disk "main backup 2007 ".
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid key length ( <<<IN RED )
Repair completed. "
~~
Though it said the repair was completed, the "invalid key length" issue
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 appear on my desktop

I'm trying to run a backup, but my hard drive won't appear on my desktop. I see it in Disk Utility, so I know it's there...
...any suggestions?
Thanks,
kevin

Kevin - There might be a few reasons as to why your external drive won't appear have you tried any of these suggestions:-
STEP ONE - Confirm that the drive is being seen by the system
Click the Apple icon and select About This Mac.
Click More Info.
Select the Drives and Volumes tab.
If the Iomega Hard Disk drive is not listed under the USB/FireWire arrow, proceed to STEP THREE.
If the Hard Disk drive is listed, continue with the next step.
STEP TWO - Format the Hard Disk drive to Mac HFS format
The Iomega Hard Disk drive is factory formatted to FAT32 for maximum compatibility. If you have not reformatted the disk or the disk is formatted to FAT32:
The disk may mount very slowly in OS X if the disk is FAT32 formatted.
Mac OS X will not mount any DOS (FAT32) partition larger than 128GB. For more information, please check the Apple® Web site at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107483
Warning: Erasing your Hard Disk drive will erase all of the information stored on the disk. If possible, back up your data before erasing the hard drive. Mac formatted disks are not cross compatible with other operating systems, such as Windows®, without the purchase of additional third-party software.
Double-click the Mac hard drive icon.
Double-click the Applications folder.
Double-click the Utilities folder.
Double-click the Disk Utilities icon.
Highlight the drive in the left window.
Click the Erase tab.
Select Mac OS Extended.
Click the Erase button and then click Erase from the confirmation window.
If the Hard Disk drive now mounts, you are ready to use the drive.
If the Hard Disk drive does not mount, continue with the next step.
STEP THREE - Are the Mac OS X drivers detecting the drive properly?
The Iomega Hard Drive may not mount if you are using Mac OS X versions under 10.1.3. If you are not using Mac OS X 10.1.3 or higher, please visit the Apple® Web site at http://www.apple.com/macosx/ for information on getting the latest version.

After installing snow leopard my external hard drive won't show up on screen or backup

Afer installing leopard my external hard drive won't show up on my desk top. It also won't backup my hard drive with time machine. I need help.

Try going to finder preferences, general, make sure show these items on desktop external disks is clicked. You can also go to sidebar (same pane) and click it there so it will show when you open your HD. Time Machine>system preferences>time machine>turn it off click select disk, make sure the correct disk is selected, the turn TM back on. Hope this helps.

Hard Drive Won't Mount After Repair by Second Computer

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

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

My tx2 hard drive won't start!!! HELP!!!!

My laptop is a a Tx2z-1000 is 2 1/2 years old. For the last 9 months or so its had this problem when booting up. My laptop will turn on but the hard drive won't turn on with it. O can hear the fans running and the rest of the computer trying to start up but the hard drive light stays dark. My monitor stays dark or sometimes will light up and stay black. My laptop will eventually shut itself down. I would like to know how to fix this problem because I'm pretty sure it's not good for my laptop. Also, I want to note that my laptop also has an overheating problem which could be contributing to this problem, I'm not sure. Any help would be lovely. Thanks!

Bummer! But when I looked this drive up, it seems like it's a current model, so I'm assuming it's fairly new?
Unfortunately, I'm not really an expert on external drives, but I'm thinking that if the drive is relatively new, and still spins up, then it should eventually be possible to access it again. Maybe if you could clarify the circumstances of the crash a bit, it will be possible to get this sorted out. I'm not entirely clear on just what happened.
First, could you describe the crash--what exactly did the drive do? Was a cable bumped or anything like that? Or did something happen just out of the blue? And does the drive still spin up?
I am assuming that you checked the obvious things like making sure the USB port was working and the cable itself was OK. I gather that Disk Utility can see the drive, but all the options are grayed out so it can't do anything? Is your PC a different computer, not just Windows on your MBP? I gather that the PC can also see the WD drive, but can't mount it? I know nothing of PC's so I don't know any PC troubleshooting.
One thing that might be worth trying is calling Western Digital and talking to their tech support people. I believe that WD has a 3 year warranty on their drives, and I expect they would be most familiar with the drive and what the problem with it might be. For example, it might be that some component in the enclosure went south and is keeping the drive from mounting. It could be that the failure of some component in the enclosure is what caused the original crash. It might even be worth trying the drive in a different enclosure.
Good luck!

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
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My hard drive crashed and my replacement hard drive won't recognize my iPhone. I can see all my content, but can't move or replace it. I was able to access content on my iTouch just fine and luckily synched my contacts back into my laptop, but no dice on the phone. Any ideas? BTW, my phone is a jailbroken original iPhone and I am not particularly proficient with this kind of stuff.

Does it boot into Open Firmware with CMDOption+of ?
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=42642
reset-nvram (press Enter)
set-defaults (press Enter)
reset-all (press Enter)
Have you done a PRAM reset...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

My MacBook pro won't recognize hard drive I put in it. It boots only to a white screen unless I boot to my recovery USB. If I do that then I can select my USB and my external time machine drive in the disk utility, so no problems there. But what do you

My MacBook pro won't recognize hard drive I put in it. It boots only to a white screen unless I boot to my recovery USB. If I do that then I can select my USB and my external time machine drive in the disk utility, so no problems there. But what do you think it is? It won't recognize any hard drive I put in the machine, so might it be the sata cable?

Boot the Recvoery USB, use Disk Utility to select the internal drive makers namea and size on the left.
Now select erase and select the midde option and click erase, it will take a bit to complete but it's best for the drive.
Now select Partiton tab, click the big box and Options: GUID and then Format: OS X Extended journaled and click apply.
Quit and you should be able to install OS X now with your Apple ID and password.
see
http://osxdaily.com/2011/08/08/lion-recovery-disk-assistant-tool-makes-external- lion-boot-recovery-drives/

External Hard Drive won't turn on

Hi all,
I have just bought a brand new iMac and a new Western Digital 1TB External Hard Drive to use Time Machine on. I have plugged it all in, done my first back up and it all went fine.
Then, I turned off my computer and all the plugs to go to bed as usual, now when I have come back to it in the morning the Western Digital Hard Drive won't turn on! It's all plugged in and fine, but no life at all.
Has anyone else had this? Can anyone explain or help?
Thanks

Hello Simon. I'd do what Barry Hemphill has suggested and try to return or RMA the drive.
Did you buy the drive from a store or online? I believe the fault would not be fixed by any apple updates as it seems to be a hardware fault rather than a software one from what Ive read.
Is this the drive? http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=357
Does it work when connected via USB at all? I had issues with a firewire drive sometimes not showing up so I switched to a USB interface and it worked fine sinc then.
Good luck!

External hard drive won't shut down after switch from OS10.5 to OS10.4.11

i recently chanded my OS from 10.5 to 10.4.11 (as a programme i want to use is not compatible with leopard), but since i have done this my external hard-drive won't shut down automatically when i shut down my mac. i have to switch it off at the plug instead.
can anyone suggest how i can get it to do this again?
i'm a little concerned that i'm damaging the external drive by turning it off manually all the time..
thanks

Some hard drives shut off with shutdown, some don't. Sometimes hard drives that did shut off with one system will not do the same with a different system. My hard drives which did shut off, prior to 10.5 now stay on.
This is not really a problem as all hard drives spin down after 10- 20 minutes when not in use, whether your computer is on or off. Leaving the drive on is fine, shutting it off manually is fine.
-mj
[email protected]

Finder won't run/Hard Drive won't mount on restart!!?!

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