Firewire 400 /USB2 External Hard Diskwon't mount anyomre

Hello
My Iomega firewire/USB2 external hard disk has decided to stop mounting.
When I start it up the light on the external HD comes on but th disk doesn't spin & the fan doesn't kick in. and it doesn't even appear when I use disk utility.
Here are the actions which I have tried so far- all of which haven't worked:
•Zapping/Resetting PRAM & SMC
•Unplugging all power, USB & firewire leads. waiting 5 mins and then restarting with only the keyboard & mouse leads and then plugging in the Firewire lead for the External HD.
• I have tried all available Firewire ports on my iMac & External HD with different leads.
• Tried the external HD on a different Mac.
When I tried to connect the the external HD using a USB2 lead, the drive actually starts spinning & the fan kicks in but it still doesn't mount on the desktop and doesn't appear in disk utility.
Any ideas?

it doesn't even appear when I use disk utility.
Contact the drive manufacturer for support or use a professional data recovery service. Nothing done in software alone will resolve your issue.
(57698)

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2 different brand USB external hard drives not mounting- Firewire ok

Hi, first timer here so apologies in advance.
i have to different brand external hard disks and they both show up fine with a firewire connection. the trouble is that i need to use the usb connection and neither show up. (shows up in system profiler though but not disk utility.) why USB if i can use Firewire? I will be using the disk to connect to a Wii console via usb port and the Wii is not recognizing either disk either?
Any ideas on how to get one of these disks to mount by USB?
cables are fine as work with USB only hard disks.
Thanks in advance

Hello Bob,
Thanks for your reply.
Unfortunately it does not show up at all in "disk utility". But appears in System Profiler under USB. This is true of 2 different external hard drives that mount fine with the firewire cables. One is a 3.5 inch and the other is a 2.5 inch portable. The USB cable is not faulty as tested it with another USB peripheral. Now a big believer in coincidences. Am i doing something wrong?
any other thoughts?
thanks again

Tiger randomly stopped allowing my External Hard drive to mount and...

Hello, I have been using an External Hard Drive (1 terabyte Seagate, new) for a couple months if not a year by now for saving movies, and all of my iTunes on it. Its been working wonderfully. However it recently stopped being able to mount citing invalid hard drive and gives me the options of either eject, ignore, or initialize. Im not sure what to do. And also my computer has been acting funny every since the day it started. I will walk you through it step by step.
July 6th I was surfing the web and unfortunetly clicked on a link that aparently contained a trojan. Or atleast thats what my Antivirus notified me of. I had downloaded the trojan some how without a pop up or anything telling me I was downloading anything. (using safari) So i ran a virus scan and saw one virus was in my system and that it couldnt be deleted or repaired by my antivirus program, Im working on getting rid of that but at the time I had my Seagate 1 terabyte external hard drive attached via fire wire to my Macbook. It was working then.
Later that day I unplugged my hard drive and took my laptop around a little bit, nothing unusual. Then when i came back later that night I tried plugging in my hard drive and a pop up stated that the hard drive was unable to mount and I could either eject, ignore, or initilize. I tried may different routes, restarting, letting it all rest, etc. And in Disk Utility i try to verify the disc and it says its unable to and needs repairs. So I try repairing the disc and it says unable to due to an error.
Then yesterday I went to my applications and noticed none of my applications are there anymore. These applications were saved on the internal hard drive so it was very odd to me. However i can still use spotlight to find and open my apps.
My question is, What can I do to allow my external hard drive to mount? I dont figure it is the trojan on my system but could it be? If so how would I fix it? Im mostly worried about getting the data off the external hard drive then I can reformat it. Or if theres a way to just get it back to normal without reformatting Id love to hear it. As for the applications missing and the trojan on my internal hard drive I can fix that, at the very least Ill just reboot my system with my original OS Disc and just start fresh, its about time anyways.
But please. If anyone has ever had their external hard drive just stop mounting and figured out what to do I would be ever so grateful to hear how you did so. The hard drive itself isnt damaged, its not making any unusual sounds. Whenever i plug it into the computer it acts like normal (turning on and what not) until the computer tells me it cannot mount then nothing happens. Ive looked online and it seems to be a software issue.
If its any help I was downloading a torrent (.avi, no viruses) at the time. I know sometimes if one file on the hard drive becomes corrupt the whole thing becomes unusable. Regardless I would appreciate it if anyone knows a way to at the very least retreive the files on the drive, but preferably know how to just get it back to normal. If i could get it to force mount (via terminal or something) I know which file would possibly be the corrupt one or something so I could work with it.

Bejan:
Thanks for posting back with the pics of the messages from your computer. Disk Utility reports "Underlying task reported failure" when repairing a volume is a directory error which cannot be repaired by Disk Utility. Unfortunately, Disk Warrior may not be able to replace the rebuilt directory, either. Tech Tool Pro has a better chance of repairing it, although this particular directory issue can be stubborn, and is often rooted in a hardware issue. Your surest bet is to backup/clone the information on the HDD using a utility like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner, completely reformat and erase the HDD (directions below), then restore data from backup.
Formatting, Partitioning Erasing an External HDD
• Connect external HDD to computer
• Turn on external HDD
• Start up computer and log in
• Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility and launch DU.
• Select your HDD (manufacturer ID) in left side bar.
• Select Partition tab in main panel.
• Click on Options button
• Select Apple Partition Map (PPC Macs) or GUID Partition Table (Intel Macs)
• Click OK
• Select number of partitions in pull-down menu above Volume diagram.
For more partitions than one, after you have selected the number of partitions adjust the size of the partition by selecting the top partition and typing in the size; then move down if more adjustments need to be made.
(See Dr. Smoke’s FAQ Backup and Recovery for tips on partitioning external HDD)
• Type in name in Name field (usually Macintosh HD)
• Select Volume Format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
• Click Partition button at bottom of panel.
• Select Erase tab
• Select the sub-volume (indented) under Manufacturer ID
• Check to be sure your Volume Name and Volume Format are correct.
• Click Erase button
• Repeat above procedure to erase each partition
• Quit Disk Utility.
cornelius

Menu bar items disappear, and external hard disks not mounting

Hi,
This problem started yesterday. I start up my Mac, and none of the menu bar items in the top-right of the screen show up. Then I noticed that none of my external hard disks had mounted.
Looking at the Activity Monitor, I saw that sustemuiserver was not running.
Reading around, I discovered that this usually follows a FrontRow hack (which I haven't installed). I tried deleting the ~/Library/preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist file and logging out and back in again. Everything seems to work again, for a while. However, the same thing happened this morning.
Has anyone else experienced this, and anyone know a fix to stop it from happening?
Thanks!
Tom

I've been having the same problem for a while (I believe since 10.5.3). I have reinstalled OSX, installed OSX 10.5.6 combo hoping that it would fix it, but nothing yet. I have the problem only when I insert an expresscard into the slot and restart. It connects to a PCI expansion chassis. When I restart with the ExpressCard installed, all menu items dissappear and I can't eject volumes (hard drives) from the desktop. If I restart without the ExpressCard in, the menu bars seem to work properly. I tried with an older G4 running 10.4.11, with a CardBus card and the same chassis, and that worked fine... all menu bar items displayed and worked properly and I could eject disks.
I have also tried creating new users, but that didn't work either.

Firewire 800 2 External Hard Drives, 1 w/800, other w/400

Backstory:
My current External Hard Drive has both USB & Firewire 400. I've just purchased another, larger, that has both 400 & 800. The original I'll call the 400 is set w/Time Machine. I'd like to switch that to the new 1, "800", but still keep the old connected as a secondary back up device for specific items.
All that being said, how do I go about doing this?
With the 400 already installed on my computer, it IS visible on my Desktop as it should be. When I attempted to start the new 1, 800, it does not show.
Due note, I was unaware only 1 firewire item shows at a time. Should I be concerned about my computer, or is this common? Both show properly in my "System Profiler", but ONLY 1 AT A TIME.

Strange. I have seen posts claiming certain Macs don't recognize 2 firewire ports at the same time.
That is nonsense. I have two FireWire drive connected to two separate ports. Please provide a link to such a post.
When I unmounted my 400 (old), then it showed in the profiler, but still not on the desktop.
If the 800 drive's volume does not mount when the other drive is disconnected, there is something wrong with the drive.
Connect the 800 drive by itself (no 400 drive connected). Run Disk Utility. Does the drive show up in the sidebar? If so, is there a volume indented under the drive in the sidebar? If not, you may need to go to the Erase tab (or Partition tab) and format the drive. If there is an existing volume, select it in the sidebar and click the Mount button in the toolbar.
So the first step is getting the 800 drive to be recognized properly by itself.

Lacie firewire 800 external hard drive not mounting in mac os 10.4.8

I have a pm g5 Dual 2ghz system ,i have connected an firewire 800 lacie 1tb external hard drive to the system,now the problem is it is not mounting on the desktop shows in the diskutility repaired the disk say's disk volume ok any way to mount the external hd on the desktop

Hi Veena, Welcome to Apple Discussions.
And you've tried choosing the volume and pressing the "Mount " icon on the tool bar of Disk Utility?
Have you shut down your Mac and disconnected your firewire cable from both ends and let it sit about ten minutes then reconnect and try. Also, it is important to disconnect the AC power to your Mac, this helps to reset the FireWire port(s).
Do you have TTP or DW, both of which you could use to try to mount it.
It is also possible that you have a bad cable or a bad port, do other FW devices work?
-mj
[email protected]

WD 400 GB external hard drive doesn't mount after software update.

I had been using my WD external hard drive with TimeMachine for almost a year. Just recently the WD doesn't show up on desktop, however you can see it under the Apple's "System Profiler". Any suggestions?
External HDD:
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: Yes
BSD Name: disk1
Version: 0.00
Bus Power (mA): 500
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Western Digital
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: Unknown
Product ID: 0x0900
Serial Number: 57442********************938
Vendor ID: 0x1058

c14user,
Looking back at your original post: "Partition Map Type: Unknown" is a little suspicious. I'm wondering if, while the disk was formatted correctly, perhaps the partition scheme was not changed from Master Boot Record when you first began using it. I made that discovering recently on a drive that I could no longer select as a Time Machine disk. If so you'll need to re-partition the disk either GUID or Apple Partition Map.
*_How Should a Time Machine Hard Disk be Prepared?_*
For Time Machine to work properly, the hard disk must be formatted “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” and its’ Partition Scheme should be either GUID or Apple Partition Map.
Time Machine is incompatible with disks partitioned as Master Boot Record (MBR). Unfortunately, this describes nearly every hard drive you can buy because MBR is a Windows partition scheme. (Naturally, this DOES NOT apply to Apples’ Time Capsule.)
For some, Time Machine begins to perform as expected with a new external hard disk. But then the initial full backup or subsequent incremental backups fail. The user only later discovers the hard disk was still partitioned as Master Boot Record (MBR).
One article on Time Machine made this observation: “Virtually everybody will have to open Disk Utility and repartition the disk as APM or GUID. It doesn't really matter which one because the Time Machine disk will not be bootable anyway. APM allows a disk to boot a PowerPC, GUID allows the disk to boot an Intel processor but both are easily digestible by Time Machine on either kind of processor.” [http://www.girr.org/mac_stuff/backups.html]
Procedure
Connect the hard disk you wish to use for Time Machine backups.
Launch Disk Utility.
It will appear twice in the pane on the left. (Make sure you recognize that it is different from the 2 icons that represent your Macs' internal drive.) The upper entry represent the device as a whole, including the controller inside. The lower entry represents the hard disk contained within the device.
Click on the upper icon of the external hard disk.
Select the "Partition" tab.
For "Volume Scheme" choose "1 partition". (Chose 2 partitions if you intend on storing other data on the disk besides your Time Machine backups.)
Name the disk.
Format should be "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)".
Click "Options".
Select either GUID or Apple Partition Map. (See above for significance)
Click "OK".
Click "Apply". Then click “Partition”.
Once the external hard disk is repartitioned, select it again in Time Machine preferences and use it for your backups.
Let us know if this was helpful.

Help Getting an External Hard Drive to Mount.

I cannot get my LaCie 120 external drive (connected via firewire 400) to mount on my Mac Pro. It worked fine a couple of days ago. I ejected it and proceeded to connect a second firewire 400 drive and when I tried to reconnect the LaCie, the computer didn't see it. I tried the disk utility and there is nothing for me to select so I can't repair, mount, or format it. It's just not there. I've tried everything I could find information for, new cables, unplugging the computer to get the buses to reset, etc.
What I find odd is that when I plug the LaCie into my macbook it loads fine and all the information is present. I could just do a work around and transfer all the info from the LaCie to the new drive using the macbook, but it's a large amount of video, and it would take a very long time.
If anyone has any info or other ideas about getting my LaCie to mount it would be greatly appreciated.
Mac book, imac, Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4.9)

I have had a problem on my Mac mini with USB external hard drives. Did you try plugging it into a different port? I find I would need to reboot to get the drive to work again. I fixed it with a USB hub. Works fine now. Probably a different problem, but just making sure.

External Hard Drive not mounting on bootup

I have a USB2.0 Hard Drive formatted with ntfs, which holds my music. I have an fstab entry for it using ntfs-3g and I can mount it fine after booting up. But the drive doesn't automatically mount like it should. It looks like the system is mounting the fstab entries before it is finished detecting my external drive. Anything I can do to fix this?

fwojciec wrote:I let my external ntfs drive be mounted by hal - I have no entry for it in /etc/fstab. In order to have it mounted with read/write privileges I had to create a hal policy like this wiki page describes: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HAL … ntfs-3g.29
I'm not sure if this solution is what you're looking for though...
I actually tried using hal to do it and it didn't work right for some reason.

How do I get an external hard drive to mount?

I have two Maxtor One Touch 4 Plus External Hard Drives. One works the other doesn't. The one that works is over a year old and has been a trusty loyal aid. The one that doesn't is only a couple of weeks old. It worked fine initially. Now no icon appears and its volumes won't mount. I have switched both HD's between a MacBook Pro and an iMac with the same results. I've also switched between USB and Firewire cables. Same again.
I have a fair idea what went wrong.
The adapter for the new faulty HD was dislodged a little from the power socket. A small electrical crackle was heard, nothing to serious, but obviously enough to create this problem. The power jacks here in this part of the world are not often the best and snuggest of fits.
I have visited the Seagate/Maxtor "support" sites and come away with nothing other than switching on and off, etc... very elementary.
Any suggestions as to how I can get this dodgy piece of hardware to get over itself and get operational again?
Thanking you in advance.

Do you hear the drive spin up?
You may want to contact the manufacturer and ask for a replacement power adapter/cord and see if that helps.
Personally, I think there has been some damage to the circuitry inside the enclosure, which really can't be repaired.
~Lyssa

External Hard Drive not mounting on Desktop

Hello,
I use a 250 gb Lacie external hard drive (firewire) for backup. For the past week, the external hard drive has mostly not been mounting on the desktop.
I don't think it's a power issue, because after turning the unit on both the light indicating power turns on and I can hear the motor operating.
As indicated on the Lacie web site, I went to disk utility in system preferences and repaired disk permissions for my Mac's hard drive volume. That doesn't seem to have made a difference.
Does anyone have any other suggestions as to what I should do?
Thank you,
Manny

Hi gavvx, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Feel free to start a new topic of your own will get more individualized attention, and many more helpers!
It can be hard to sometimes find where to start a New Topic, so here's the link...
http://discussions.apple.com/post!default.jspa?forumID=758
Did you try highlighting them, then the Mount button in Disk Utility?

How do I setup an external hard drive to mount at boot (without any login action) in Mavericks?

First the Details:
MacBook Pro, Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013
OS X Mavericks 10.9.5
USB 3.0 External Hard drive
I am currently using an external drive for my user storage. Right now I log in with a separate User account to mount the drive, log off, and then log in with my user. I am trying to remove the extra steps so I can boot my Mac and log right in. I have not found any method that pertains specifically to Mavericks, and all of the methods I have tried for older OS versions do not seem to work properly.
Thank you for your help.

How is the EHD formatted? It is USB powered? If it's formatted OS X Extended (journaled) with ownership set to be ignored and connected to a USB port it should mount as soon as the MBP is booted up and the EHD is spun up. It should be accessible to all accounts on the Mac.
Do you have additional software that came with the drive that you've installed? What make and model drive is it?

External hard drives wont mount

I ejected my two external hard drives before disconnecting them. I have reconnected but they do not show up in the Finder or Disk Utility. The drives show up when plugged into my macbook. jp

Hello, are the USB? Do other USB things work in those ports?
Might try this...
reset FW bus, same goes for USB reset...
Reset the Firewire bus
If your Firewire or USB isn't recognizing any device. A solution which has worked for some whose hard drive became invisible in 10.4 was simply to follow these four steps to reset the Firewire/USB bus:
1. Shut the machine down.
2. UNPLUG the power lead to the computer and any firewire/USB drive.
3. leave it for 10 minutes.
4. Connect back up and reboot.
http://www.macmaps.com/firewirebug2.html

External hard drive not mounting on emac, works fine on windows xp machine

I am running an emac 1ghz powerpc G4 with 768MB sdram and version 10.4.9
I have an external hard drive that up to a few days ago ran smoothly. It contains all my itunes, iphoto, and imovie libraries.
Now it will not mount. It lights up, it runs, etc but I can't use it. I tried restarting machine etc. No avail.
it is a usb drive. Today I took it downstairs and plugged it into my daughter's windows xp machine. It recognized it right away (I was shocked too) and everything is there good as before.
I plugged it into every usb port in the emac and nothing. I am using the same cord on the xp and it works fine.
Any idea what it could be and how to fix it. I read on hear a lot to use disk utility. However when I run it it just freezes. When I turn that external drive off disk utility runs fine.

I am running an emac 1ghz powerpc G4 with 768MB sdram
and version 10.4.9
I have an external hard drive that up to a few days
ago ran smoothly. It contains all my itunes, iphoto,
and imovie libraries.
Now it will not mount. It lights up, it runs, etc
but I can't use it. I tried restarting machine etc.
No avail.
it is a usb drive. Today I took it downstairs and
plugged it into my daughter's windows xp machine. It
recognized it right away (I was shocked too) and
everything is there good as before.
I plugged it into every usb port in the emac and
nothing. I am using the same cord on the xp and it
works fine.
Any idea what it could be and how to fix it. I read
on hear a lot to use disk utility. However when I
run it it just freezes. When I turn that external
drive off disk utility runs fine.
Your external drive is formatted FAT32 or FAT, or the Windows box would have a problem seeing it. (Unless you have MacDrive on that box, that is.)
If it is formatted FAT32 or FAT, you are NOT going to be able to use Disk Utility (or any other Mac utility) on that drive. Disk Utility doesn't do FAT.
I'd copy the contents of the drive elsewhere then start up Disk Utility first and then plug the drive into the Mac and format it FAT32 from Disk Utility. If that doesn't work, format it FAT32 on the Windows machine. Note: if this drive is larger than 32 GB, you're going to need to generate two or more partitions, as while WinXP can read FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB, it can't create them. Macs and Linux boxes can create large FAT32 partitions. Second note: if the drive is smaller than 4 GB, you might want to think about formatting it FAT instead of FAT32. Indeed, Windows may insist. Do not let Windows format it NTFS; Macs can read NTFS volumes, but can't write to them.

Please help... External Hard Drive not mounting

Hello, Please help me if you can:
I have all of my data backed up onto a Seagate External Hard Drive, purchased just a few months ago. I just got a new laptop (MacBook Air) and need to get my data off of my hard drive, but it isn't showing up on my Desktop or Finder. It shows up in Disk Utility, but when I ask it to "repair" it says:
"Invalid B-tree node size
The volume 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."
The problem started after I added some data to it - I accidentally unplugged the Drive without Ejecting first. The next time I plugged it in it allowed me to view my files but not add anything else to the Drive, and now when I plug it in it doesn't even appear. I am running Lion.
I would be happy to back up the files as it says, but as it doesn't show up anywhere I can't find the files to access. Can anyone help me find a way to get the files off of the disk, or fix the disk so that it is readable?

Hi, Brian, and welcome to the Discussions!
You might perhaps launch System Profiler (from Applications/Utilities) and see if the device is listed there under the FireWire heading in Hardware Overview.
Can you hear the LaCie spin up when powered on?
You might download the free trial version of Data Rescue II and launch it to see if it recognizes the drive. This software often does when DW or Disk Utility won't. If it does, run a scan with it to see if the data on the volume is viewable.
You can test the FireWire port with another Firewire device, or by hooking up to another Mac via a FW cable and trying to boot into FW Target Disk Mode. Visibly check the port at the Mac end first to insure that there are no bent pins at the connector (so you won't damage another device).
You can try resetting a "dead" FireWire port by shutting down, unplugging the external FireWire devices, and disconnecting the Mac's power cord for thirty minutes or so. Before doing this, run Disk Utility's Repair Permissions process on the startup volume first, to see if that corrects it.
Gary
1GHz DP G4 Quicksilver 2002, 400MHz B&W rev.2 G3, Mac SE30 Mac OS X (10.4.5) 5G iPod, Epson 2200 & R300 & LW Select 360 Printers, Epson 3200 Scanner

Firewire 400 /USB2 External Hard Diskwon't mount anyomre

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