Hard Drive Not Mounting After Being Magically Changed to Read Only

I was using a firewire connected, verbatim 1tb drive as a time machine. Everything had been working fine, but I walked away from my laptop for the morning and came back this afternoon to find my hard drive changed to read only. Time machine wouldn't back up to the hard drive; so, I rebooted.
Since then, I haven't been able to get the hard drive to mount. It won't show up in Drive Utility or on the desktop. I have rebooted the hard drive, unplugged it, turned it on and off.
What should I do? How do I fix this? It has my backups and my music. I'm no amused.

I've had exactly the same trouble this morning.
I'm using a MacBook Pro with my Time Machine on a portable Hard Drive. When doing my regular back up the computer froze. I force restarted the computer and the TM drive came up as 'Read Only'.
So, I rebooted again and the drive is not mounting at all. I can see it connected through System Profiler, however the drive isn't showing up in Disk Utility.
Does anyone have any ideas? Coz I don't seem to be the only one with this issue.

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External Hard Drives not Mounting after Yosemite Upgrade

I've just upgraded to Yosemite, and none of my external (USB) hard drives are mounting (they don't even appear in Disk Utility).
Any ideas?

MacBook Pro 2009. 250 SD, HD 8Gb Ram.
I have had this issue for about a year...with no resolve!
Apple and the User community have not been able to solve issue.
I have had to work around it since the Oct 2013 Mavericks upgrade which “killed” (rendered unmountable) both my USB and Optical drives.
Hundreds of replies and remedies have not corrected my issue. Hundreds of replies stating that if there was a global issue it would of been fixed by Apple, not true. And dismissive replies stating that there must be a hardware issue are very discouraging.
So now, hoping to help the voiceless masses, I'm forced to share my experience.
As I stated, I have been having the issue since one of the Mavericks upgrades. The upgrade rendered externally attached drives unmountable...They are all seen in Disk Utility. They are just not mountable. Regardless of the flavor of the disk format, either Mac or PC, they are found, seen and refuse to mount. I can see them using Terminal commands, I can see them in System Report. I can reset all the memory I want...turn it off, reset, sleep, turn on, restart...NOPE...And the optical drive takes in disks but ejects them after an attempted mounting. Keep in mind, there are no physical issues with either USB or optical drives.
So now...I have had enough and need to correct the issue or buy a new equipment - starting to get into software development and need working equipment!!!
For the past month, I have been visiting the Apple store to assist in my issues...Back Story: I'm an IT Field Tech for the largest department store in the country and I have the good fortune of dropping in the Apple store anytime I want...The Geniuses booted the MB with a bootable image of Mavericks, and the USB and Optical drives WORKED fine...So, after I had stumped the Geniuses with my problems, we agreed that we would attempt to format and re-image the MacBook...Fine, do it, it's backed-up, how you ask? - Via my wireless My Book Live 3T drive, which only took 24 hours to backup, AKA Time Machine!
Great news! The re-image of Mavericks proved to work! I WAS able to mount external drives attached! How is that possible? Don't know, don't care! It just worked! So happy!
But wait! I then took the laptop home. Connected to my WiFi, to update Mavericks to the latest version...Good so far! Then it came time for a Time Machine restore, AKA Migration Assistance restore...So, I proceeded to migrate data back to my MB via wireless drive, good so far, booted in Migration Assistant, and I chose to restore everything except the network files, thinking that may be an issue...22 Hours later, the MB migrated without issue...all apps and personal files had migrated! YAY!
BUT NOW THE USB AND OPTICAL DRIVES FAILED TO MOUNT!!!
Great now what? I know, I will just re-image and start again...WAIT, I don't have a Mavericks Install Disk, no problem, I will just create a bootable USB drive with the Mavericks Install Image I downloaded onto my MB this month...NO YOU CANNOT, because you have no use of the USB drives!...And, Apple stopped making OS CDs back in 2009...Oh, and that wouldn't of done me any good, because the optical dive was unusable, anyway!
SO, back to the Apple store with my head hanging! At this point, Yosemite came out the previous Thursday, so no more Mavericks images, great! Perhaps the new OS will alleviate my nightmare!!!!...So, they re-imaged my Mac with Mavericks, drives worked again! SO, I took my MB home and attempted to download the new OS, Yosemite...which only took 2 days due to the amount of traffic on Apple's servers!...Anyway, Yosemite finally installed without out issue! Drives still worked! And so, I shutdown and restarted the system...No issues, USB and optical drives worked beautifully! Yay, Yosemite!...Fixed all my troubles!!!...Not so fast...
And so, I, again, attempted to do a Time Machine restore, via WiFi, this time it took 24 hours to restore...AND it worked! All apps and personal files transferred without issue, So happy! Put the laptop in Sleep and left it home and went to work! Came back from work, tested the system without issues. Rebooted...USB and Optical drive are NOT MOUNTABLE!
So now, what is the file that the restore keeps pushing to my MB that kills the USB and optical drives?
I would just stop restoring from a Time Machine backup, but the only way to get into the TM image is to use Migration Assistant. I cannot view the date in time of the image in TM's Star Wars time line. So, I'm forced to back up everything from the image in Migration Assistance. Not sure that it being an encrypted image has anything to do with it...
...Regardless, what is being “restored” to the MB that continues to configure the OS in such a way that makes all external drives unmountable...keep in mind, my external keyboard, hub and mouse are usable via USB.

Hard drive not mounting or being recognized by my MacBook???

Hello,
I have a Glyph external hard drive that, all of a sudden, is no longer being recognized by my computer. I does not show up in the system profiler nor in disk utility. It connects using firewire. I have connected my digital camera via firewire recently and it was recognized. I have also connected this hard drive to another (newer) mac and it has no trouble recognizing it. So it's seems that it is not the firewire jack in my computer that is problematic nor is in the actual cable. Any suggestions? I don't even know where to start as a i have nothing to work with.
Thanks in advance.
Message was edited by: governorsir

hello,
as recommended in the link that was referred to me i have tried zapping the PRAM and
resetting the firewire ports. I was unable to turn off the spotlight indexing on the drive because it (the external hard drive) is not being recognized by my computer. Resetting the NVRAM does not seem to apply to my situation.
Still no change.
I just tried plugging in another external hard drive which is a newer glyph and it was not recognized through the firewire BUT it was recognized when i used the USB port. My hard drive only connects with firewire, this newer model (which is a friends) has multiple connections, hence the USB and success.
I don't know where this leaves me. It is obviously the firewire port or jack (whatever its called) in my computer that is troubled. I dont know what further steps to take.
I have contacted Glyph tech support and they seemed baffled. They recommended that i send in the HD so they can update the firmware (although they said it was "a shot in the dark"). Both my computer and my glyph are no longer under warranty so i obviously want to be sure i put my money towards the most likely conclusion.
Any further things i can try before i send the glyph out? anything?
thanks so much.

External Hard Drive not mounting after...drop

Hi all,
Not really a Time Machine question, but my wife, not realizing an external USB hard drive was connected to my macbook, pick up the laptop and the external drive dropped on it's corner...slight damage. It is a 320Gb hard drive with three partitions....two for storage and one for time machine backup. The two storage drives are mounting find and seem OK, but the time machine partition is not mounting. Disk Utility sees the partition but can't mount or repair it and gives me the error "Invalid sibling link, unable to verify or repair."
Any ideas on what I should do next (other than back up the other two drives)? Should I try erasing the disk and see if it'll mount?
Thanks,
John

Johnk93 wrote:
Disk Utility sees the partition but can't mount or repair it and gives me the error "Invalid sibling link, unable to verify or repair."
If you have +Disk Warrior+ (4.1.1 or 4.2 only), or another heavy-duty disk repair app (that you're certain is compatible with Leopard), it might be able to repair the partition. DW is about $100, so unless you think you may need it for other things in the future, it may not be worth the chance.
Otherwise, if Disk Utility can erase it, it's probably ok. In this case, though, it would be worthwhile clicking +Security Options+ then +Zero Out Disk+ to be sure it can write to the entire partition.
Long term, though, I'd be a bit reluctant to trust my backups to it. (Perhaps a hint to Santa?)
Additionally, I am having trouble ejecting the two working partitions. It seems to eject them becuase they no longer appear on my desktop, but I get the "unable to eject...." error message. Not sure what this means.
See what happens after erasing the TM partition. That may clear it up. If not, try mounting them again.

External hard drive not mounting after Leopard install

Installation seemed to go ok, but when I switched on my Maxtor One Touch II drive nothing happened. Doesn't appear in Disk Utility but I can see that it is attached when I look at System Profiler. Any ideas what to try next?

After giving up on the upgrade of leopard I decided to do a clean install (to get rid of all the junk) My Lacie 800 and 400 fire wire drives mounted with no problem. It turns out my seagate fw 400 drive daisy chained off my would not mount and cause the other drives not to respond in the finder till I removed the Seagate drive and then the other two drives worked fine. I daisy chained my Firelite 400 and it mounted fine and its being used for time machine. So far haven't been able to solved this problem, the Lacie and Firelites work fine.

External Hard Drives not mounting after upgrading to Lion

The disks orked without issue before then I upgarde and nothing. I see that others have had the same problem but I haven't seen and answer. Can anyone help? My iomega drive can be seen in DU but can't be highlighted and is running two red lights. My Lacie brick disk has completely vanished.
I'd happily go back to snow lepord if it's a simple fix.

The disks orked without issue before then I upgarde and nothing. I see that others have had the same problem but I haven't seen and answer. Can anyone help? My iomega drive can be seen in DU but can't be highlighted and is running two red lights. My Lacie brick disk has completely vanished.
I'd happily go back to snow lepord if it's a simple fix.

Usb hard drive not loading after security update

usb hard drive not loading after security update
I can't seem to find any other posts about this problem.
I have three external hard rives connect by a USB hub to my iMac.
Problem is that if I turn on the hard drive(s) AFTER start up I get a message that the drive either was not recognized by the OS or that it was ejected unexpectedly.
I get the same issue but not all the time if I turn them on before I boot the iMac.
I used the disk drive utility to "repair" the drives but they always come back as "probably ok".
If I restart the iMac with the drives connected (on), it seems to work but not all the time.
A bit annoying as I am wondering if the drives are OK or not.
I don't always need the drives as they are for backing up images from my camera using Apreture.
This all began after i did the latest security update.
is the update to blame?
mahalo.

Yes, you can still use those instructions to reset the PRAM.
You said that you booted to your install disk and that your primary drive did not show up at the Select a Destination screen? That usually means that the computer is either not recognizing your partition, or it's not recognizing the hard drive itself.
Start with this article and follow all the steps even if you already tried them. I suspect that you'll get to step 4 and you'll end up having to call Applecare. If you haven't done those steps, they're most likely going to make you do them anyway, so you might as well get them done before the call.

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

External hard drive not mounting

external hard drive not mounting

I fixed mine by uninstalling the software that came with the harddrive such as Tuxera and reinstalled it now myharddrive works again and i did not have to delete the harddrive and reformat it.
I tried a lot like reseting the Pram And connecting other harddrives but by unstalling the original software it works all over again. I hope this works for you because i was getting pretty frustrated myself.
Im running a 2012 macbook pro with 10.9.3
boom mind blown

USB Hard Drive not mounting til after restart

This weekend I put a new internal hdd in my Power Mac G5, and decided to use this opportunity to go ahead and put Leopard on one of my macs.
I'm finding that it doesn't mount some my USB External Hard Drives (3.5" externaly powered cases) unless I plug them in, and then restart the computer. (It also works just starting up if the G5 is off.) The drive needs to be turned on before the start up.
This is the case with an older IDE->USB 5 inch case, a brand new sata->USB 3.5 case (with the former g5 drive inside, and a sata->usb newertech bridge on the g5 drive. A bus powered 2.5" one mounted fine without the restart. I have not tried any flash drives.
I've tried the different USB ports on the G5 with no difference. I have not tried plugging it into a hub that's pre-connected (either powered or non).
They don't show up in Disk Utility during the time they don't mount. They do after the plugged-in restart, though. They also unmount then remount fine after the plugged in-restart.
The drives work just fine on my MBP (running Tiger). They worked just fine before the Leopard upgrade. If I boot into the Tiger partition on the G5, they work just fine.
I've seen references to other people having what sounds sort of like this problem in google searches but nothing exact, and those threads seem to get sidetracked with useless comments (like "Well, you should just use Firewire!" etc).
Has anyone experience this...and moreover, anyone found a fix.

Two things to check:
The drive must be formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or FAT 32
You almost always have to use a powered USB hub with the under powered port on the Time Capsule, even if the hard drive has its own power supply
Where are you expecting the drive to "show up"?

WD hard drive not mounting on startup...

Grrr! This is driving me nuts! I have a WD MyBook Essential 2.0T USB hard drive connected to my iMac 27" i7, and every time I reboot the iMac, the drive fails to remount. Disk Utility doesn't recognize it, either. My only option is to disconnect the USB cable and then reconnect it. The drive then shows up. But pulling a cable is so very not an acceptable solution! Don't think data can be corrupted if the drive hasn't mounted, but still....
I have four other, older WD drives and none do this. I had a more recent WD MyBook Essential drive that also wouldn't mount on startup on my old MacBook Pro, wouldn't take the updated firmware, and kept corrupting files, and I ultimately replaced it with this new 2.0T drive shortly after getting the new iMac. But even with a new drive, new iMac, and different cable, I still can't get the WD drive to mount upon reboot. Arrggghh!
Has Western Digital done something different with these newer drives? How can I get this thing to mount after a reboot?
Thanks!

Steve Porritt wrote:
Has Western Digital done something different with these newer drives? How can I get this thing to mount after a reboot?
Thanks!
Western Digital has been playing with their firmwares for years. They keep trying to maximize power efficiency to anticipate when the computer will use the drive and shut it down when it's not required. This isn't really a good thing for Time Machine, and I don't want any vendor to constantly change their firmware for their purposes. Many other companies seem to be able to build drives that just work.
I've updated the firmwares on many of these drives for clients because they performed so flakey with both USB and Firewire. I think there are problems with the firmwares being designed to maximize power consumption at the cost of not being always ready for Time Machine. Some of the WD firmware is actually on the drive itself, not the interface chipset, so problems return when you swap out the drives in the cases...
In addition, I have no need for all of the freeware/backup programs and other features they junk up these drives with. I just want reliable drives for backing up files, without having to uninstall their embedded programs. I found this review that pretty much sums it up for me: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1FBX79QK9IR9N/ref=cmcr_prviewpnt#R1FBX79QK9IR9N
Looks like you've been burned twice by their eager, innovative engineers.
I buy all of my external hard drives from OWC at http://www.macsales.com

Hard Drives Not Mounting - Help!

Hello,
This is my first post, so please forgive me if I leave anything out....
I recently had to replace my hard drive. Got it all going, then I noticed when I went to put a music CD in, that it would not show up. I tried others with no luck....then I put in a cd with data, and it showed up on the desktop....
While trying to mess around, I made my 2 LaCie external hard drives go away! I have tried checking cables, and they come on when the computer does, they don't show up in system profiler....
Please let me know what information you might need to help me diagnose these problems....my computer has been so good to me, I want it back up and running...
Powerbook G4 Ti 667 MHz Mac OS X (10.3.9) 512 Ram

Hi, mcholley, and welcome to Apple Discussions.
I can't suggest any remedy for your optical drive not reading audio CDs but having no trouble with data CDs, except to say it's apparently a software problem, not hardware-based.
After replacing your hard drive, did you reinstall your operating system from scratch on it, or did you restore your OS from a backup you had made?
The disappearance of your external drives (are they USB or FireWire?) may be power-related. Are they externally powered, or are you powering them from the USB or FireWire bus? If they're bus-powered, are you connecting both of them at once? That won't work: together they demand more power from the bus than it can supply, and while they may spin, they won't mount. Connect only one of them at a time. Is either of them detected by Apple System Profiler when just one is connected to the Powerbook? Does it mount on the desktop then?
If you've been able to connect both drives to the Powerbook at the same time in the past, and both have mounted OK, then there's been some hardware change recently, other than your hard drive replacement, that has caused the loss of external drive detection. Is it possible that during your recent operations you've turned off one or both of the external drives, or disconnected it/them from the Powerbook, without dismounting it from the desktop first? Depending on what, if anything, the drive was doing at the time, that can make a FireWire drive unmountable and all the data on it inaccessible. In that case it may be necessary to erase and reformat the drive. I don't know whether the same is true of USB drives.
Do you have another Mac to which you can connect the drives, to see whether they show up on it? If they do, you might have to consider the possibility that the port(s) to which you've been connecting them on your Powerbook is bad.

Hard drive not mounting to desktop/computer

I am setting up my AirPort Extreme 802.11 with an attached 300GB LaCie Brick hard drive with iTunes library. I can see that the Brick is recognized in the AirPort Utility > disks page, but it will not load onto my computer and I can not access it. I have the utility set to auto mount disks and have even tried to manually mount the disc, but it will not appear on the desktop. Am I missing something?
PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Hello,
I've got the same situation pretty much exactly.
I am using a Lacie porsche 250g USB disk.
Airport Disk Utility doesn't see the volume.
Airport Utility sees it just fine, but it is not showing on the desktop as it was in the past.
The AEBS was working, and the disk was being mounted properly until I began trying different configurations to allow my networked PC to also see the volume.
It seems to have started after I had set up the AEBS to assign access to the disk using accounts. I set up a couple accounts, just to see how they worked, and restarted the AEBS, but the volume did not appear. I set it back to the initial setting requiring password for disk access, and I've not managed to get it working properly again.
Any help at all would be fantastic.

ITunes Resets to local Drive Space when External Hard Drive not mounted

I have a large shared network drive where my son, my wintel box and I all have media placed on. All our computers are networked and authorized for each others music.
The problem is iTunes will default the 'iTunes Music folder location' to a local drive space if the external drive / path is not immediate available when iTunes is started (user:Music:iTunes Music vrs Eternal HD:Music:iTunes Music). This will sometimes will happen on boot, I have login mounting the external drive but that authorization / process once in a while times takes longer than starting up iTunes mostly due to an iPod connected to that computer. Since iTunes is not seeing that external drive (it isn't available yet). So the effect is iTunes defaults 'iTunes Music folder location' to the local music location - but - maintains the full library list (ie 10,000 question marks).
I have each computer maintaining it's own libraries on their respective drives which index to the music folders / files on the external (this is an itunes default to maintain the local library one each computer).
So ... How can I force iTunes to maintain the 'iTunes Music folder location' ?
(can the default location be changed ?... plist or some other file, or is this hard coded - or write a script to hold up iTunes to launch until after the external Hd is mounted)

I am sure that some will cringe at this
Note (my opinion) : I found when sharing with a Wintel box and Apple boxes it is better to use just smb. Mixing the smb AND afp arises to hang up problems and the afp is the side that seems to hang up the most. (that hurt me to type, I blame Finder - another story)
So - the script I use is fairly straight forward - Open Script Editor:
tell application "Finder"
mount volume "smb://[ip address of hard drive]/[drive directory you wish to mount]" as user name "[username]" with password "[password of said user]"
end tell
I recommend compiling the script (don't forget to save a copy you can also edit too - save as script). To compile a script : Save as Application, Run Only, No Start Up Screen. Since this has hard code Username / Passwords in the code - make sure you are happy with who will be running this script. So with the goal is to auto run when you start up, I tend to feel let it go ahead. If you wish to use afp (ie you are only sharing between macs - change the smb to afp in that code).
Next is to add this to your start up. Sys Pref > Accounts > Login Items
Just add the compiled application script to your user(s) login item.
Now for the - well, ugly part. Remove the iTunesHelper from the list.
Using Finder, Find iTunes - Show Package Contents, find iTunesHelper (it is iTunes:Contents:Resources)
Drag iTunesHelper into the Login Items (it should be listed now at the end of the list). Why this help I really can not tell you - I only have an idea of why - I have noticed that when my iPod may be plugged in when I reboot that iTunesHelper starts later in the sequence.
I did play around with changing the start up info on the unix side, for the brave only I would suggest. But - you can hard code a little better auto mounting a volume / hard disk / folder there on boot up. I did with to stay in the Mac GUI and AppleScript was just plain simple. The script can be modified to test if the volume is mounted etc time out try again etc etc etc... I kept it simple and straight forward.

Hard drive not recognized after lion upgrade

My hard drive WD "My Book Studio Edition 1TB" mounts and unmounts non stop. Firewire or UBS is the same. Also with a new firmware of the disk and after a formatting. The file system is HFS+ journaled. My hardware is an iMac early 2009 24". No problems with all the other OS.
What's happen with Lion, Apple?

Hey Yelghoul,
Make sure that the drive does not have the WD encryption stuff on it. That causes the Mac to render the drive unreadable and useless. Use another computer to remove the software and any passwords on it. Then plug the drive back in. If there are no files on it, simply open "Disk Utility" under "Utilities" to reformat the drive to make it usable with Lion or other computers.
Best of luck,
@youyouxue
Lion Developer

Hard Drive Not Mounting After Being Magically Changed to Read Only

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