Firewire disk won't mount

I have a new AliMac24 ( Woo Hoo!) I was transferring Jpeg files from another computer using an OWC firewire HD. At first it was working well, transferring hundreds of files. Then suddenly picture of the HD contents flashed off & it now refuses to open back up. The picture of the hard drive appears when I plug it in, & the icon flashes as if it is going to open up, but nothing happens. I have tried restarting the computer & mounting the HD from disk utility ( verified & found no errors) Any suggestions?

I had this problem with an OWC Mercury Elite Firewire drive. I could not get my new iMac to recognize the hard drive, but my Powerbook recognized the drive with no problems. This worked for me:
1) Shutdown your Mac.
2) Disconnect Mac power cord.
3) Disconnect all other firewire or USB connections including mouse and keyboard from your Mac.
4) Shutdown your external drive.
5) Disconnect the external drive's power cord and all other connections.
6) Allow your Mac and external drive to sit with power disconnected for five minutes.
7) Reconnect only the Mac power cord, keyboard and mouse (directly - bypass hub for now) and power on.
8) Reconnect the external drive power cord and power on.
9) Connect your USB or firewire cable to your external drive.
10) Connect your external drive to your Mac.
Your Mac should recognize the drive.
-d

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Firewire drive won't mount g5dp1.8

firewire drive won't mount g5dp1.8
i'm at a loss
i have tried everything reset pmu, reset pram, replaced battery
i have a gtech 160 gb when i connect it to thr g5 the led light up
it stares to fliker like it loading then nothing( i can connect it my g4 pb is it mounts fine)
is there a way to test the port?
is this a comon problem??
thanks fred

Reset the FireWire bus per this document:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88338

DVD-Ram disks won't mount on Dual 450 - help!

I've got a particular and pressing problem. I'm an audio engineer among other things. I have a lot of files archived temporarily on DVD-Ram disks from my old Dual 450. I have to retrieve some files pronto but suddenly the DVD-Ram disk won't mount. The drive spits out the disk as soon as I insert it. It will mount CDs but not these DVD-Ram disks. Please help. I need to back these up off of thse old disks. But more urgently I have pending sessions that require I get some files from these disks. This happens both under OS 9.1 and 10.2.8 the last revisions of this computer I did. But it used to work until a year or so ago.
I have so far repaired permissions, used Disk Warrior and sprayed around the dusty drive with compressed air. It seems that perhapos a mechanism is loose springing the disk out when it's not immediately recognized as a CD or DVD-R.
Help!

Probably your best bet is to dismantle the drive and try manually cleaning the lenses, which has made a difference for some users.
Other option is to replace the drive with a new one capable of reading (but not necessarily writing) DVD-RAM media. LG-4163B is one such drive, Pioneer DVR-110 can also read DVD-RAM. These drives are under $40 online in the US.

External firewire drive won't mount

I've got an external Western Digital firewire drive that's been somewhat flaky recently, and today my Mac won't mount it.
When I open Disk Utilities, I can see the drive (along with the other drives daisy chained together). When I click on "mount," I get a message saying the drive can't be mounted and that I should try running disk repair. I've run both repair disk and verify disk a few, and each time it says that everything is just fine. However, the drive still won't mount.
Any thoughts about how to get the drive working again?
For what it's worth, this drive is basically my manual backup drive that I use each day just as a safety backup. I don't think I'm going to lose anything extremely important if this drive is dead or if I have to try erasing the drive, but I'd like to see if I can rescue it first before taking drastic action like that.
Thanks!

Dale,
That sounded like a brilliant thing to try. I took the drive out of the daisy chain and plugged it into the unused firewire port in the computer. I ran the repairs and crossed my fingers, but came up with the same thing
At least I've eliminated one more option. Wish I could mark your reply helpful, but I'm not seeing that option available . . .maybe I've used my "helpfuls" for one day.
Although this is PROBABLY duplicate material on this drive, I'm going to hold out for another day or so in case anybody else comes up with another brilliant idea before I take the plunge and reformat the drive.
Thanks!

60 GB external Firewire Drive Won't Mount

I have a 60GB external Firewire Drive that I have been using for a long time. I just turned on the computer and it won;t mount. I opened up the Disk Utility and I see that on the left side it says "57.3 GB Maxtor." I repaired permissions and verify disk. It still won't mount.
I don't want to have to erase it if possible. There are files I need on that drive. How can I get it to mount so I can grab some files off of it and move it to another drive?
Thanks in advance

Hi Edwurd,
What the message is telling you is that Disk Utility and the "underlying task," the Unix utility fsck, can't repair the volume.
Time for stronger medicine if the data is critical. There are commercial products that work differently and can recover disks when fsck can't. Look at Disk Warrior or Drive Genius. BUT... given that Disk Utility thinks it's a "non HFS volume," I wouldn't be optimistic.
If the external drive's data is unimportant - e.g., a backup you could rewrite - then see if Disk Utility can repartition and erase the drive. If only the catalog or partition map is bad, this will get you a working drive. But if you can't repartition with Disk Utility, suspect a hardware malfunction and check your warranty.
Good luck,
John

FireWire drives won't mount

Neither of my FireWire drives will mount on either my iMac 20" G5 or my iBook G4...I have a 500GB WD MyBook and a La Cie 80G. I've gone through all the suggested tips, and still nothing. I've reset the PRAM several times, reset the firewire bus by turning off the computer and unplugging it and the drives for a while, etc. I've tried different cables, too.
The drive shows up in the system profiler as an unknown device but not in the Finder. I have a USB hub with a card reader and 4G SD card that shows up just fine. I tried the MyBook in the USB port but it didn't show up there either.
The power supplies are working, as the indicator lights are on for both drives.
The MyBook was working fine until recently; not sure when it stopped working. I hadn't used the La Cie for a while but hooked it up to store iMovie files.
I plugged a Canopus ADVC-55 analog-to-digital convert into the FW port on both computers and it showed up as a named device in System Profiler. That tells me the port is OK and the problem is with the HDs--right?
Very frustrating! Hope someone can help.
Thanks in advance.

For what it's worth... I'm having the exact same issue and so are many others on the forums since 10.5.6.
See:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9206734
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9206635
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9043830
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8917764
---cross posted---
I'm having a very similar issue as of the last few weeks at least. Periodically I'll turn my FW drive on and it won't mount and isn't visible in Disk Utility. This is usually after waking the computer from sleep.
The only way to get it back is to restart.
Also the console shows a long running list of errors that seem to occur non-stop when the drive is on, connected, but not mounting.
AppleFWOHCI_AsyncTransmit::waitForDMA
AppleFWOHCI_AsyncReceive::waitForDMA
I've also noticed that the system occasionally will not boot up and instead freezes on the Apple logo on startup. Not sure if this is related however.
---

External disk won't mount after 10.5.7 upgrade

Hi,
I know there's problem with Buffalo external HD; mine is Lexcron 3.5'' external case and it won't mount neither. I tried PRAM restart, and if I go to Disk Utility and try to repair, it gives me the following message:
Verify and Repair volume “Dirty Hary”
** /usr/local/bin/ntfsfix has been disabled because of volume corruption issues.
** If you still want to try fixing your volume, use /usr/local/bin/ntfsfix from the command line...
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.
It worked with 10.5.6 and it still works with Win XP (it's NTFS format).
Is there something that I can do?
Will this issue be solved in Snow Leopard?
Thanks in advance for any kind of constructive info (I've already read threads with Buffalo issue, but I didn't find any thread giving a solution).
Sharlo

Sharlo wrote:
Hi V.K.,
Thanks for your response, can you provide some more details?
OS X has very limited support for NTFS. you need to repair the drive from windows.
How do I do that? I mean the disk works normally in Win XP and it worked normally in the previous OS X version. Btw. I've also installed NTFS-3D which allowed to write on the disk and search from spotlight (of course when it was mounted).
run chkdsk in windows and see if it finds any errors.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315265
it can also be that the problem is caused by ntfs-3g which is known to have a number of bugs. you can try uninstalling it or plugging in the drive in a mac without ntfs-3g installed.
there is no "issue" to solve.
Well if it worked in 10.5.6 and it works in Win XP and it doesn't work in 10.5.7 I am tempted to say 10.5.7 has an issue.
the fact that you have a problem with one drive on your particular system doesn't mean there is a problem with os x in general. an issue is when all or at least many people have a problem, not one.
furthermore, NTFS is a proprietary file system of Microsoft with closely guarded secrets about its inner workings which is why it has very limited support on other types of operating systems. apple is under no obligation to provide ANY support for something like that. programs like NTFS-3g are essentially unauthorized hacks.

Hard Disk Won't Mount; Lion Wants To Initialise It - Please Help!!

Greetings All,
Disk issues! Help! Ok, I have an external RAID box (Sonnet 8 Bay SATA) with 4 pairs of RAID 1 drives. One of the pairs, 3Tb Hitachis, all of a sudden won't mount on OS X Lion. Everything was working fine, tried to save something to them, Mac refused, I restarted and the other three pairs show up, but the 3Tb Hitachi pair don't. OS X gives me the message that "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer". I've restarted the Mac and Sonnet box several times, checked that all drivers are up to date and reinstalled anyway. Have also taken the two drives out and tried to get them mounted on my Mac Pro or MacBook Pro using a FW800 dock without joy - always get the same message mentioned. Disk Warrior won't even help as when the Hitachi 3Tb is plugged in via the dock, the program hangs when it's scanning for disks. Although all the data on the drives is almost definitely backed up, I don't want to initialise / format the disks as there is a chance some video files aren't and also it'll knock FCP X as this was the primary drive where Events and Projects are stored.
Any suggestions would be thoroughly appreciated :-)
Cheers,
Edmond

Hi,
Both drives physically are working (both bought together several months ago). The Sonner RAID software shows the RAID pair as ok and doesn't report any issues or errors - it sees both drives and the RAID 1 is 100% fine. So, as far as teh RAID box is concerned, all is well and there are zero issues.
When I try plugging the drives in seperately using a dock, neither will mount and give the same error message :-(
The issue seems to be at a data / OS level. Biggest initial problem is I can't mount them to check :-(
Edmond

System disk won't mount

Hi folks,
I have a Mac mini running 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. I'm having problems with iCal, so I erased the program and its Library support files, and tried to reinstall from the system disk (which is 10.6.3). The machine won't mount it, just ejects it after a while.
Is this normal behavior since the OS has been updated? It's new behavior to me. What would I do if I needed to reinstall the syatem?
Thanks,
Eric

Run the combo 10.6.8 update. If that doesn't work, get your PRAM battery replaced. If that doesn't work, get your optical drive cleaned and see if the disc inserts then. If that doesn't work, but other discs do work, then I would call AppleCare to get replacement original discs. If they don't work, then I would have get an external DVD drive from http://www.macsales.com/ and see if the disc will work from them. If that dosn't work, bring it in for service to find out what is wrong with it.

Hard Disk Won't Mount Volume

I have a hard disk that won't mount. It was previosly part of a software mirror RAID. The raid was degraded, so I tried to rebuild the second raid mirror. THis failed, and now the master won't mount either. In TechTools, the drive is reported as being fine, but the volume still won't mount. Any suggestions? This is really setting us back a bit.
Mini, iBook, PowerMac G5, XServe G4 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

If you know what you are doing you can check out Article number 106987. If that looks too complicated for you you might want to take the computer to an Apple specialist.

Help -- System disk won't mount

Hi folks,
My mini: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz, ID Macmini4,1
System: 10.6.8
I need to restore my iCal. It's broken: won't give me recurring event alarms. I'm trying to run my System Disk and it won't mount, the machine just rejects it. Same with the Applications Disk that came with it.
The System Disk is 10.6.3 and the machine is now running the fully Updated version.
Help, please, this a business computer and I need iCal back.
Thanks,
Eric

Run the combo 10.6.8 update. If that doesn't work, get your PRAM battery replaced. If that doesn't work, get your optical drive cleaned and see if the disc inserts then. If that doesn't work, but other discs do work, then I would call AppleCare to get replacement original discs. If they don't work, then I would have get an external DVD drive from http://www.macsales.com/ and see if the disc will work from them. If that dosn't work, bring it in for service to find out what is wrong with it.

External FireWire disk doesn't mount on Leopard, does on Tiger?

Hi All,
I have an external FireWire Hard Drive that mounts as it should on all our Tiger Macs, but is invisible on our Leopard Mac. If we swap the FW cable for a USB2 cable, it shows up.
Is this perhaps another Leopard 'thing' maybe? Like the one where Leopard couldn't erase a hard drive to FAT 32 like a Tiger could?
Cheers and thanks in ant...
Chris

"Methinks you're perpetuating a myth"
I'm too long in the tooth to either listen to or perpetuate myths of any kind! Not a myth unfortunately, a weakness in Leopard that was pointed out to me some time ago (when Harry Potter was a boy) by a sage far wiser and way older than you or I - and he was right, and more importantly brought to an end some hours of frustration with Leopard.
So there!
Thank you for your suggestions, which have made me think. It can't be the cable because it works with all the Tiger Macs. It might be the slot but if it is, I have two faulty slots which would be rare on a pretty new machine.

Firewire HD won't mount unless I reboot after being ejected?

Hiya
I'm not a Mac newbie, but I am a FW newb. I've used USB 2.0 external drives, but I finally got a MacBook Pro so I thought I'd give FW 800 a go. I got a drive that's designed to work well with Mac's (Seagate) that does USB 2, FW 400 or FW 800. I'm using FW 800, which works fine, however once I eject the drive it won't mount again if I plug it in again to my Mac or my partner's unless I reboot the machine I'm trying to get it to mount on.
It's quite odd as this wasn't the case with USB 2.0, ie it'd mount over and over without reboots after and eject. Is this how it's meant to be or is something else awry?
Cheers.

I was having trouble with my FW 400 burner in SL.
Check out Ken Marks solution in this thread, it works well:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10190800&#10190800

Disk won't mount - Unknown USB Device (Link in Compliance Mode)

I have an HP Envy DV7 (dv7-7243cl ) with Windows 8 Pro x64. My Western Digital 2 terabyte My Book USB3.0 external drive periodically won't mount ( sometimes it will, sometimes it won't). The drive has its own power source.
When this happens Windows device manager shows - Unknown USB Device (Link in Compliance Mode). This can happen if the system is up and running and I plug the drive into the USB port or on system startup where the drive is already plugged in.
Any clue how to fix this?
Other details:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3630QM CPU @ 2.40GHz
12 Gig memory
Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000
System board 181C 52.24
Bios F.26

Well, the problem is that - as outlined in one of the articles I linked to - some USB devices will not work in Safe Mode; that may have to do with the fact the Safe Mode is only meant to be a troubleshooting tool, not a regular way of booting up. Did you have the USB devices attached while upgrading to 10.6? That would also be a problem - I unplug everything except keyboard and mouse.And, did you repair permissions after the upgrade? If not, do it now.
And, the other problem is the fact that you wait 1 - 2 years before addressing the issue; when you had it in for the last repair and it still exhibited the same problems afterwards, you should would have taken it back, possibly with some screenshots, exact notes of how/when/error messages, etc. and insisted on having it fixed or replaced.
So, I'd run the Apple Hardware Test (after you make sure that you have a complete backup) - instructions here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509
Report back with whatever messages you wind up with.

Firewire HD won't mount

We have two macs. We recently restored our MacBook from a hard drive error, and we have a lot of important stuff saved on a My Book external HD. Unfortunately, it doesn't mount on either the MacBook (running OS 10.5.5) or our iBook (running 10.4). It appears in the system profiler but not in either Finder or Disk Utility. Does anyone know what might be the problem, or better yet, the solution?
Thanks in advance!

See the following:
FireWire Issues- Drives disappearing or unmountable - corrupt volumes - solutions;
What to do if your computer won't recognize a FireWire or USB device;
LaCie's Mike Mihalik checked in with some tips about dealing with FireWire failures:
Seems like the FireWire issue needs to be revisited quite often. Here is my often repeated suggestion which appears to clear up many FireWire issues: reset the FireWire ports. Panther has a Finder Preference to show mounted volumes on the Desktop. You must set this for mounted drives to be visible. Please follow these instructions to reset your FireWire port. Here is a summary:
1. shut down and disconnect all external drives and peripherals ; make sure nothing is connected to the FireWire ports.
2. use Apple Disk Utility to repair permissions on your internal boot drive.
3. shut down and disconnect the AC power from the computer as well as the drives; if laptop, also remove battery; let sit unpowered and unconnected for 15 minutes.
4. reconnect AC power to only the computer (battery too if laptop)
restart computer.
5. verify that FireWire ports are visible within Apple System Profiler.
6. reconnect FireWire drive (only one); refresh window within Apple System Profiler to rescan the FireWire bus; confirm that drive is visible.
7. confirm drive is OK by using Apple Disk Utility and apply First Aid
repeat for other drives, one at a time.
And, you can try using Disk Utility to repair the drive:
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger and Leopard.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now restart normally.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (4.0 for Tiger, and 4.1 for Leopard) and/or TechTool Pro (4.6.1 for Leopard) to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.

Firewire disk won't mount

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