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.
---

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Firewire drive won't mount g5dp1.8

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

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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.
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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.
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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.
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External firewire drive won't mount on macbook but does on ibook

Hello,
I'm trying to hook up my icybox external hard drive to my new macbook but it will not mount. It works fine on my Ibook G4.
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Thx. Yes that was what i thought but there is no update as far as i can see.
http://www.raidsonic.de/en/pages/home/home.php
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Does anyone else have this problem? My firewire drives (some, not all) will not mount when the firewire cable from my deck is plugged into the fron panel on my G5. Weird. When I unplug it, they instantly mount. I'm running 10.3.9, and I'm wondering if this is something that has been fixed in Tiger? Any other solutions?

stay away from belkin cards though, nothing but reported problems.
www.macsales.com
www.macgurus.com
both great places for products like these. i put a siig card in my g4 from macsales and i've never had a firewire related problem of any kind.
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Firewire drives won't mount on any port, tried different drives, cables

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Hi dragonfly921, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Shut it down, remove all power, and remove all peripherals & the PRAM battery.
Let sit for a few minutes/hours, then reset the SMU on a Power Mac G5 (Late 2004) or Power Mac G5 (Late 2005) ...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1436
Earlier G3, G4, G5 models...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1939
Plug everything back in, put the PRAM Battery back in, start it up.
My G5 will no longer mount any external hard drive...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11893237&#11893237

I just reinstalled tiger and Now my firewire drives won't mount

Here's the deal:
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3 - Resetting Open Firmware
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5 - Repaired permissions
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Which OS? Post indicates 10.4.2 and configuration indicates 10.4.3 and 10.4.4. Try this. Disconnect all FW peripherals, shutdown, restart, reinstall 10.4.4 combo update, restart, launch Disk Utility, repair permissions, restart, open SysProfiler, click on Firewire, and ensure that it shows something like this for all your FW ports:
Unknown Device:
Manufacturer: Unknown
Model: Unknown Device
GUID: 0x0
Maximum Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Connection Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
If so, then rehook the FWHD cable and turn the power on. Relaunch SysProfiler and you should be good to go.

WD firewire drive won't mount, help?!

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I feel for you, but don’t give up too quickly. Start by trying to make a copy of your most important data onto the new drive. Format that new drive with Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and the GUID Partition Scheme.
As the drive shows in Disk Utility there is a fair chance that it will show as an available source in Carbon Copy Cloner. When you have copied CCC from the downloaded .dmg to your internal volume (say into your Utilities folder), launch CCC, select the menu item ‘Update CCC’, check the ‘beta releases’ box and you will have the latest release, v3.3.1-b3. (Even though it’s a beta is has been out for long enough to have been well tested, and it will maximise your chances of copying where there are disk problems). If that volume does appear in CCC’s Source menu, select it and choose “Incremental backup of selected items”. Select small groups of items to be copied, starting with those that are most important to you. Repeat with other groups of items until you think you have managed to copy as much as you can. (Failures to copy certain items will not adversely affect whatever has already been copied).
Don’t hesitate to get DiskWarrior -- everyone should have it. Once you think you have copied as much as you can with CCC, give DiskWarrior a try. It is agonisingly slow if run from its CD - copy it to your boot volume and run it from there. Run it in its default mode first. If that fails try its "Scavenge" mode.
Andreas

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Might try Data Rescue II...
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
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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
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Filesystem verify or repair failed.
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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.
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New partition on external hard drive won't mount

I have an 2TB external drive connected by FireWire to my 24-inch, Early 2009 iMac. I created 2 partitions 1 that is about 35 GB and another that is the rest of the 2TB. The 2nd largest partition mounts fine and is being used by Time Machine for my back up. The 2nd one I wanted to use for a Tech Tool Pro eDrive. However the 35 GB drive won't mount. Well it mounts, but after a few seconds it unmounts itself. This is the message I get as it unmounts itself:
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8/18/13 7:18:45.789 PM fseventsd[43]: creating a dls for /Volumes/eDrive but it already has one...
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Any ideas?
I've checked the partition with Disk Utility and no errors.
Regards,
Chris Johnson

If the drive has more than one interface (USB, FireWire, Thunderbolt, eSATA), try one of the other interfaces.
Check that the data cable is securely inserted at both ends.
Try a different cable.
If you're connecting the drive through a hub, connect it directly to a built-in port on the Mac.
If you're connecting it directly, try a different port.
Disconnect all other devices on the bus, or as many as possible.
Test the drive with another Mac. Test another drive with this Mac.
If the drive is bus-powered, but has an AC adapter, connect the adapter.
Boot into Recovery and launch Disk Utility. Does the volume mount?
Start up in Safe Mode and test.
If the drive doesn't work under any of the above conditions, and if another drive does work with the same Mac, then the drive has failed. You may be able to salvage the mechanism by removing it from the enclosure and installing it in another one, or in a drive dock.

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

External Hard Drive Won't Mount in 10.2.8

Greetings,
I have a MacBook Pro running the latest version of Tiger. I have a Maxtor 300 GB external hard drive (Mac OS Extended [journaled] ) which I use with my MacBook to store music, video, other media, and backups. I connect that drive to my MacBook via FireWire, normally, but the drive can also do USB.
Since wireless connectivity is so nice, I thought it would be nice to be able to access that hard drive from anywhere in my apartment, without being tethered to the drive by a FireWire cable.
Enter my wife's iBook G3 and Mac OS 10.2.8.
She has this computer from her school where she teaches. It has a G3 processor running at 600 mhz with 128 mb of ram. Since she rarely uses the old machine, I wanted to use it to "serve" my external hard drive to my MacBook.
But when I connect the hard drive to the iBook via either USB or FireWire, it does not mount. I ran Disk Utility and the drive is visible in the pane on the left of the interface, but when I verify the disk I get lots of error messages that say, "Reserved fields in the catalog record have incorrect data."
I don't want to let the iBook repair the disk because I am afraid it my screw the whole thing up and I would lose all my data...not a good proposition.
So, my question: What is going on here? Is this drive simply not going to work with 10.2.8?
I wish I could upgrade the machine to Tiger, but it does not have the minimum system requirements!
Thank you very much for your help. I apologize if I missed something else in the forums that addressed this same issue.
Macbook Pro 2.0 Ghz Intel Core Duo 1 GB Ram 15.4" LCD Mac OS X (10.4.7)

All you need to upgrade the iBook for Tiger is another 128 MBs of RAM. It has both Firewire and USB ports. You do want to upgrade it for what you plan to do. The problem you may continue to have, however, may be due to the fact that the age of the computer is such the disk controller does not support hard drive volumes larger than 128 GBs, which is probably the reason the drive won't mount.
The reason you get DU errors is likely because the drive was formatted using the Intel Tiger version of DU, while you were using the Jaguar version. That's a definite no-no.

External Hard Drive Won't Mount Via USB

I have a Western Digital (Model #WD2500...) Hard Drive that is about 3 years old. I initially set it up on a PowerBook running Mac OS 10.3.x. I have two newer laptops both running Snow Leopard, and neither will recognize my drive via USB 2.0.
The weird part is that the drive will mount when connected via Firewire (400 in this case). My newest laptop is on of the new MacBook Pros and it only has Firewire 800. I'm guessing I could probably get a 400 to 800 Firewire cable, but it would be much easier to just use the USB 2.0 connection. Any idea why the drive won't mount over USB 2.0?
I went to the Western Digital site, and there didn't appear to be any new drivers or firmware for this product. The drive seems to run perfectly well over the Firewire connection, so I don't see what the issue is with USB. The documentation that came with the drive indicates that it should work with USB. This is very baffling to me, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks so much!!

In most external drive enclosures that have both USB and Firewire interfaces, the Firewire interface is able to draw enough power to run the drive. Firewire can provide up to 45 watts and up to 30 volts of power per port (not all devices supply the full wattage; my MacBook model provides up to 8 watts). USB 2.0 and earlier can only provide 5 volts at 500 milliamps (up to 2.5 watts). Some newer laptop drives are at or under 500 milliamps, but just barely, and the enclosure itself needs some power.
It sounds like the USB port on your enclosure is bad. Firewire is going to provide faster transfer rates anyway, and you don't have to bother with the power supply. Based on your comments, I suspect it still might be a bad power supply, or maybe it's not the right one for the drive. Those things are easy to mix up.
If you're brave enough to crack the external drive open, what you'll find inside is a standard off-the-shelf hard disk drive, with either a SATA or PATA interface, in an enclosure. You can move the drive to a new enclosure easily.

FireWire drives won't mount

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