Formatted External Hard drive won't work

I formatted my external hard drive using the MS-DOS(FAT) in Disk Utilities so I could use it on my windows and on my mac. After the formatting finished, I copied some folders to my hard drive from my macbook and ejected it, then plugged it to my windows laptop and I get an alert "You need to format the disk to be able to use it" or something like that. Of course I don't want to format it because I don't want to lose the files since I already deleted them from my macbook. So I plugged my hard drive again to the macbook and i can't find it. I went to Disk Utilities and tried repairing but it couldn't repair. Now my external hard drive is not readable on both and I don't want to format before I can at least copy my files.
What to do?!

If you can see it on the computer not much.
There are disk recovery services that can retrieve data from such disks but their service cost $$$$
How much is the data worth to you?
Allan

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WD 1TB External Hard Drive won't work with Snow Leopard

Hi all,
I recently purchased a Western Digital 1TB External Hard Drive. It came formatted for Windows with NTFS, but I didn't think this was a problem as the packaging stated it could easily be reformatted for Mac OS. To cut a long story short, it couldn't. When I plugged it in to my Mac (iMac 21" i3) and tried to use Disk Utility to reformat it, partition it, whatever, it just wouldn't work always returning some sort of error. I resorted to using a Gparted Live CD and succesfully formated it to HFS+ but yet when I plugged it into my Mac it wouldn't mount the disk. After following advice to let Disk Utility 'Repair' the disk, this is the output:
Verify and Repair volume “external”
Checking non-journaled HFS Plus Volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Unused node is not erased (node = 1458) [In red]
Checking catalog file.
Unused node is not erased (node = 5) [In red]
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy.
Invalid directory item count [In red]
(It should be 1 instead of 0)
Checking volume bitmap.
Volume bitmap needs minor repair for orphaned blocks [In red]
Checking volume information.
Invalid volume free block count [In red]
(It should be 244164065 instead of 244148705)
The volume external was found corrupt and needs to be repaired. [In red]
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. [In red]
If anyone knows what this means, and more importantly anything I can do to try and fix this, I would really really appreciate the help!
(Obviously I see it says reformat the disk, but this is easier said than done. Now Gparted crashes when it tries to read it and Disk Utility hangs indefinitely if I try to do anything to it)

asad.a wrote:
I believe the reasons behind this must have something to do with the errors highlighted by the repair process (as copied above)- errors I don't understand.
Disk Utility can't repair NTFS volumes.
If the drive is not seriously damaged ...
Go to Disk Utility
Click on the external Drive (not on the existing partition)
Click on Partition section in Disk Utility
In the Pane under "Current Scheme" highlite the Partition and then click the "-" (minus) sign down left.
Click on the dropdown "Current Scheme" and choose a matching scheme
On Format choose "Mac OS extended journaled"
Click "Apply"
Message was edited by: lupunus / typo's fixed

Copying large files to external hard drive won't work

I tried looking for this all over google and here, and i could only find old threads that didn't end up with a clear answer, so i decided to post one of my own for the first time.
Basically, I have folders of music and movies that i'm trying to move over to the external hard drive (2tb WD my book studio using firewire 800) and at one point during the copy, the finder copy window will get stuck and won't move any further. So the copy doesn't go on, and even if i try to cancel it only the beachball starts rolling and finder won't respond until i restart or unplug my external.
The weird thing is that even when I was copying a few folders that weren't too big, around 2gb or so, it did the same thing. BUT when i took 3 individual avi files that were around 3gb it copied fine.
I really don't understand what's going on, and I want to just take the entire folder, let it copy, and go do something else rather than sit here moving file after file.
Does anyone have any idea as to what's happening? I'm not sure whether to blame my imac or my external. external does time machine back ups fine tho.. I have it split into 2 partitions, one for tm and one as a FAT drive. Any help would be great! Thanks!

All right. So let's say your hard drive is named 'WD MyBook' or something like that.
Let's also say the folder you're trying to copy is your Documents folder.
In Terminal, you'd type:
sudo ditto pathToDocuments pathToWDMyBook
Now obviously, those are fake paths and don't actually represent where those things are, but that's to illustrate the syntax you need to use.
Your external drive path will be something like this:
/Volumes/WD\ MyBook
The trick here is that if there's a space in the name of the drive, you need to substitute a "\ " for the space. You can also put single quotes around the whole thing like this: '/Volumes/WD MyBook'
Everything here is case sensitive. You can also drag the icon for the external drive into the Terminal window, and it will paste the path into Terminal for you.
So the full example would turn out to be:
sudo ditto /Users/yourusername/Documents /Volumes/WD\ MyBook
If you wanted to make sure everything went into a specific folder on your external, you'd need to add that to the path you specify. For instance, if you want everything to go into a folder named Backup on your external, the command would then be:
sudo ditto /Users/yourusername/Documents /Volumes/WD\ MyBook/Backup
Either way,
sudo ditto source destination
That's it, just spaces between everything. Like I said before, you don't need the sudo necessarily, depends what you're copying.
I don't know if that makes any sense, I'm a little out of it today. Let me know if you need further clarification on any of that, or let me know what you're copying/where it's going and I can probably help you with the syntax. Or just drag and drop! It's easy.

My External Hard Drive Won't Work With Final Cut Pro

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My external hard drive won't work on Mavericks

I have a western digital hard drive that had previously been working flawlessly on Lion, however when using it with Mavericks it had suddenly stopped working meaning it would no longer be found on the desktop or in finder. I have been using the hard drive as a time machine backup. the obvious next step was to launch disk utility and look for a solution. I have found there two hard drive names in disk utility, the first is the HDD name of Western Digital and the second is the "Time Machine" partition. Running first aid on the partition resulted in an error and that the disk could not be repaired. This HDD is important and the data cannot be lost. is there any solution to bringing the hard drive back online?
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Is there any free alternative? and here is a screenshot just for reference

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Go to Finder Preferences and make sure external disks is ckecked.

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Thanks for your feedback...
Message was edited by: steve chon

I connect my bus-powered HDs (more than one) to the iMac all the time without any problems. I have found, though, that for me the FireWire enclosures work much better (faster and more stable) than the USB2 ones. I have had the USB2 drives freeze my computer once or twice when I connected the HD, but nothing like that has ever happened with the FireWire connections. (I switched the same disk from USB to a FireWire enclosure, so all other elements were kept constant in my experiments.)
One of my HD is in a MacAlly 2.5" enclosure that offers both FireWire and USB2. The other one is in some generic enclosure with only USB2. Both are bus-powered and both work fine.

Why my external hard drive won't work now

Hi guys,
I have a 500gig USB external harddrive. Today I tried to connect to my macbook mid 2010 and it keeps beeping. When I hear it close to it, it sounds like it start to work for a few seconds and then failed over and over again.
I have connected it with my harddrive before. Plus I have upgrade my system to 10.8 golden master and upgraded my memory from 2 gig(2*1gig) to 5gig(1*1gig and 1*4gig) I don't think that's the reason. I've been using my mac with the power adapter all the time. Tried reset my SMC.
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I do not know what a sdd is, but certainly it is a normal Harddisk.
If you have TM on it, open TM preferences and reallocate this disk under "select disk" to TM, check under "options" that this disk is on the exclusions list. And in Disk Utility check how much free space you have on this disk (500GB is quickly filled with TM, and not always it condenses correctly).

HT201250 My backup external hard drive hasn't work since I insalled Snow Leopard. Bad:( I am still learning about my MAC and would just like to re-format the hard dive and set everything up again. I want to upgrade to Lion but can't untill I backup what

My backup external hard drive hasn't work since I insalled Snow Leopard. Bad:( I am still learning about my MAC and would just like to re-format the hard dive and set everything up again. I want to upgrade to Lion but can't untill I backup what I.

Read through the links here, calm down and take your time.
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents

I updated to maverick and now my toshiba hard drive won't work

i updated to maverick and now my toshiba hard drive won't work

shakejke wrote:
i updated to maverick and now my toshiba hard drive won't work
whats the format on the external HD?
verify same on another Mac, its likely a dead SATA card inside the external enclosure.
One assumes you arent referring to a 2012 Air with a Toshiba SSD, since the Air contains no hard drives, only a SSD.
2013 Air use Sandisk or Samsung SSD.

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
and got the "beach ball of death" and needed to restart.
My trusty G3 started up fine, however, the external HD was now
not showing up on the desktop as normal. I troubleshooted -by restarting,
trying different a/c plugs/ different USB ports , ran disk utility..called
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.
and when click "mount" same two messages keep showing:
message 1: "a disk attempting to mount as unknown has failed verification or has failed to
mount.please use disk utility to check the disk"
~
message 2- when unplugging and repluggin the usb in-and upon
restart:" you have inserted a disk containg no volumes that mac osx
can read to use unreadable volumes,click initialize to continue with the disk inserted ,click continue"
~
( 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 is not working on airport time capsule even after 7.7.2 firmware update.

External hard drive is not working on airport time capsule even after 7.7.2 firmware update.
I have the latest Airpor Time capsule 2gb. I specifically bought it so that I could have an external hardrive set up to wirelessly house my itunes library and movies. When i connect the drive, all i get is that the disk needs to be repaired.
the drive can works fine when connected to the macbook pro and I have run the verify and repair features in disk utility. I have also reset the airport timecapsule as well following these changes and still no change.
The 7.7.2 update says that it addressed the usb issue of not showing the drives but there are still problems as I cannot get it to appear.
Please help.
Thanks

How is the hard drive formatted?
Have you tried using a powered USB hub with the drive when it is connected to the Time Capsule?
(The USB port on the Time Capsule is borderline as far as power is concerned....you may need to use a powered hub.....even if the hard drive has its own power supply)
If the drive is formatted correctly....and....it has ample power, it will "show up" when you open AirPort Utility, click Edit, then click the Disks tab at the top of the next window.
In the example below, my Time Capsule drive is named "Backups" and another drive named "WD Drive" is connected to the USB port on the Time Capsule.
You should see the name of your Time Capsule drive (named "Data" unless you have changed the name) and the name of the USB drive if you perform the same check.
What do you see?

HT1338 I was backing up my MacBook with Time Machine on my new (correctly formatted) external hard drive. It was going fine when my 2 yo knocked the hard drive. Now TM said "failed" and the Mac refuses to recognize the external hard drive. Help please?

I was backing up my MacBook with Time Machine and using my new (correctly formatted) external hard drive. All was going well when my 2 yo knocked the disk leading to a "failure" by time machine (Latest Backup: Failed). Now the MacBook will not even recognize the hard drive. I have rebooted, tried all I can think of, but no acknowledgement of the drive. The drive itself makes noise and vibrates as if working, but nothing from the Mac. Please help or $100 down the drain... Thank you.

You may have already done these resets in the "tried all I can think of " portion of your post.....if not then here they are.....
PRAM
support.apple.com/kb/HT1379
SMC
support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
.....hopefully that is all that is required.....

External hard drive doesn't work on any other machine but my Mac since I connected it to the Mac

My external hard drive used to work on any machine. I watched movies on my tv, putted the movies on the hard drive using my pc. Since I connected it to my new MacBook Air, it doesn't connect to anything else anymore! I hope it's something in settings witch I accedentely clicked on (something with privacy so it can only connect to my Mac or something like that). Does anyone know how this happend/how to fix it?
PS. Maybe its important, I use it for Time Machine as well. Before I used that, it deleted my whole hard drive whitch really ****** me off. Now I got new stuff on it. Maybe my Mac is just claiming it to keep the hard disk for itself?

One can't read the other.
Just to be clear Mac's can read/write FAT32 but windows cannot use OS X Extended. So to use a drive on both systems it needs to be formatted FAT32
FAT32 does have limitations and possibly the best solution is to use NTFS, a more modern, robust filesystem. The drawback here is that OS X does not natively read NTFS so a third party kernel extension is needed.

FAT formatted external hard drive is not 'readable by this computer'

Hello support community
The problem: when I insert my 'FAT' formatted external hard drive (Samsung M3) into my mac book pro it comes up with the error message that says "the inserted disk is not readable by this computer" and I therefore cannot access the files.
The story (potential further details):
1. I had a problem with my mac where it took hours to load each time I turned it on, would only work when power was plugged in etc. so I had to reformat my mac hard drive (when I tried to veriify it said repair, that wouldn't work). So i'm starting with a recently reformatted, clean mac.
2. Before doing this I reformatted my external hard drive (whilst on windows machine) to FAT32 (so I can use on both windows and mac) so that I could back up my files.
3. I then transferred files from mac onto external hard drive and then also put them on a windows machine.
4. After reformatting mac hard drive when I then tried to transfer files back onto the mac I get the 'not readable' error.
The technical details:
Thank you very much indeed anyone who can help or can try and help
Cheers
Andy

Erase the drive and reformat using your Mac (Disk Utility)

Formatted External Hard drive won't work

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