Hard drive not recognized (OMG) & Time Machine

While using my MacBook 10.5.8 I got beachball and could not quit apps or restart. I shut down using pwr button and now computer will not recognize hard drive when checking with Disk Utility, or when trying to reinstall from DVD.
Any suggestions?? Is my HD shot?? Is there any use taking it to Apple Store??
If I connect my external Time Machine to another computer, PowerBook G4) (also running 10.5.8) will it load/restore old computer data??

A Powerbook G4 will likely not understand what to do with half the data on it, because the MacBook is a different setup. Do you have the original 10.5 installer disc that was used for the MacBook? If you do, boot off of it, and see if it can see your Time Machine backup through its Utilities menu for restoring via Time Machine. Connect the drive when it requests you do so. If it can, but it can't see the internal drive, then you probably need to first see if the internal drive's directory is damaged. For that you need to run the Disk Utility in the Utilities menu of the installer program for 10.5's Repair Disk. If it can't repair disk, go out and purchase Alsoft Disk Warrior. If it can't repair the disk, then yes the internal hard drive is shot. If one or the other can repair the disk, shut down the computer and eject the 10.5 disk holding the mouse button. It should reboot normally.

Similar Messages

External hard drive not recognized after time machine locked up

I was backing up to an external hard drive (300GB Western Digital) and time machine locked up. I had to shut down the computer and restart. Now the external hard drive does not show up on the desktop?
I can see it in disk utility but I am not able to mount or unmount the disk, I keep getting an error that the disk is in use. I tried to erase/reformat the disk and no luck.
Any suggestions?
Thanks for the help

KTM450rider wrote:
Do I need to boot from the install DVD?
this is often the easiest and eliminates any "busy drive" problems. what's wrong with booting from the install DVD? takes a couple of minutes.
My main hard drive is OK... the drive that I am having problems with is an external hard drive that I was using to back up my lap top. I just want to get the external drive reformatted, but disk utility will not erase it. I get an error that disk utility shut down, "please check the drive and make sure that the drive is not in use or programs are still running"
Is their a way to do a hard or forced reformatting of an external hard drive, I don't care about the information on the drive
I also tried disk warrior to recover the info on the disk and all it does is crash my mac pro????
Thanks again for the help

External hard disk not recognized by time machine

I have an external backup disk, Passport, that is no longer recognized by time machine or my computer. I used it a couple of weeks ago to restore my wife's MacBook. Hers is an older model and uses Lion. Since then my MacBook Pro--mavericks will not mount the external hard disk.
OKAY==after leaving the Passport on for a couple of hours it now is mounted. Don't know what happened, but it is now working.
CANCEL problems

I see it's now working but make sure you are running the latest version of WD software.
http://community.wd.com/t5/News-Announcements/New-Release-WD-SmartWare-Version-1 -3-6-for-Mac-10-5-10-9-11-25/td-p/628441

External hard drive not working with Time Machine

I have an Iomega network hard drive attached via ethernet cable to my Airport Extreme router.
I plugged the hard drive in. Everything works like it should. I can see the drive in Finder and I can read and write to the drive. I do share the network drive in a mixed WIN and OS X environment. I never had to reformat the drive and I can read/write to the drive with no problems from all of my computers.
I turned on Time Machine on my iMac and walked through the simple setup screens there. I never set anything up on the hard drive through the drive interface software. And Time Machine worked fine for about 4 months. Then all of a sudden, Time Machine just stopped backing up and I got all kinds of error messages saying that the TIme Machine backup failed.
So I went into Time Machine, turned it off, turned it back on. No luck. Same error messages.
So I started fresh. I deleted the prior Time Machine backups and I am back at the TIme Machine set up screen. OS X can see the TIme Machine share on my external hard drive and I tell the setup wizard that's the drive I want to use.
Then I get a window that says it's trying to connect to the external hard drive which I call "Cloud_Drive". After about 30 seconds, I get an error window that says
"There was a problem connecting to the server "Cloud_Drive-TimeMachine"
The server may not exist or it is unavailable at this time. Check the server name or IP address, check your network connection, and then try again.
At this point the external drive is still visible in FInder and I can read/write to it from my iMac. I just cannot understand why Time Machine was working and then all of a sudden it stopped.
I did go into the software management of the drive and found an area in which to turn Time Machine on on the drive's side. Which I never did before so I turned it on and then I'm prompted to enter the name of the computer and the ethernet ID. I entered the name of the iMac and I have tried using the WiFI MAC address - no luck getting TIme Machine to work and I've also entered Terminal, found a MAC address under the line titled "ether" and still the same result.
I have also changed the destination of the Time Machine files on the external hard drive and the Time Machine wizard does write a sparcebundle file to that new location but still get the same error message above.

Is it a firewire ext. HD?
Yes, many are reporting same, there is a firewire fault and TB HD on external HD from LaCie (Seagate) and from WD especially.
Technicians are looking into it.
Until there is resolution, consider setting up a USB ext. Time machine HD.
Until then consider confining Mavericks use with USB HD.
Ive tested a long line of USB HD on Mavericks, all seem fine.

HT201250 I had files stored on a hard drive that were not on my Mac. I used the hard drive for my first Time Machine back up, but it was not enough hard drive space to finish. Now those stored files are gone. Is there any way I can recover them?

I had files stored on a hard drive that were not on my Mac. I used the hard drive for my first Time Machine back up, but it was not enough hard drive space to finish. Now those stored files are gone. Is there any way I can recover them? No, they were not part of previous Time Machine backups, and I have checked both the hard drive the documents were lost on and the new one that I now use for backups. Any suggestions would be helpful, as the lost files are old pictures that are gone forever. :[ Thanks!

1. Yes, if both drives are formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
2. Reformat the drives if needed, open the Time Machine pane of System Preferences, and remove the drive with the pictures from the list of items set to be excluded.
(110331)

Down loaded Mavericks, will not install on my computer because it says "this hard drive is used for time machine back up".

Down loaded mavericks, it will not install on my computer because it says" this hard drive is used for time machine back up". So I used my old computer hard drive for back up and reloaded the program but it still says the first hard drive is being used.

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
Make sure you have selected your MacBook Pro's hard drive as the destination to install Mavericks. If so, you have the "Backups.backupdb" folder in the root level of your hard drive.
That's the folder used by Time Machine to store backups of your files, and the Mavericks installer understands that your internal hard disk is the Time Machine drive.
To fix this, open a Finder window, select the Go menu (on the menu bar) > Go to Folder, and type:
Then, delete "Backups.backupdb", empty the Trash and run the Mavericks installer. Finally, install OS X Mavericks

I bought a new external hard drive for backups, but time machine won't do a full back up. I think it is remembering backing up onto previous external hard drives, which I don't own anymore. How do I do a new full backup?

I bought a new external hard drive for backups, but time machine won't do a full back up.
I think it is remembering backing up onto previous external hard drives, which I don't own anymore. How do I do a new full backup?
When I bought the new (used) iMac, I also bought an external hard drive for backups. It worked fine, but my husband stole it.
Then I bought a new external hard drive (Seagate) and it worked fine for three weeks, then died.
So I just got a new external hard drive, which was put together from an internal hard drive and a hard drive enclosure.
Time machine did the first backup today, and it should have taken 9 hours like it did on the previous first time full back up. Instead, it took 30 minutes. That can't be right. I want to start over and do a full backup to make sure everything gets onto my new external hard drive, but I can't figure out how to do that. Please help.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below to select it:
tmutil compare -E
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).
The command will take at least a few minutes to run. Eventually some lines of output will appear below what you entered.
Each line that begins with a plus sign (“+”) represents a file that has been added to the source volume since the last snapshot was taken. These files have not been backed up yet.
Each line that begins with an exclamation point (“!”) represents a file that has changed on the source volume. These files have been backed up, but not in their present state.
Each line that begins with a minus sign (“-“) represents a file that has been removed from the source volume.
At the end of the output, you’ll get some lines like the following:
Added:
Removed:
Changed:
These lines show the total amount of data added, removed, or changed on the source(s) since the last snapshot.

Nas on airport extreme not recognized by time machine. same nas was previously used as time machine backup on different airport extreme. are there any configuration files that i can delete to fix this problem ?

nas on airport extreme not recognized by time machine. same nas was previously used as time machine backup on different airport extreme. are there any configuration files that i can delete to fix this problem ?

Time Machine has been working just fine, but in the last week or two it has given up the ghost. I reset the connections to the drive, and it will basically save a few bytes of data and then hang.
Although Apple originally announced, prior to the release of the first 802.11n AirPort Extreme Base Stations (AEBSn), that it would support Time Machine backups to AirPort Disks, they removed that option before they did finally release the base station for sale.
Since then, Apple has posted (as you have noted) that they DO NOT support Time Machine backups to AirPort Disks. As far as I know, they have not changed from that position and those who do these backups find that they become corrupted over time. Sorry, but it sounds like you just confirmed that for yourself.
1) Has one of the recent updates either on the AE (firmware) or OSX disabled this function?
No. Again, this feature has never been supported by Apple for every generation of AEBSn released.
2) Are there any changes I can make to get this working again?
If your data backups are critical to you, then you will want to use a different solution for your Time Machine backup destination drive strategy. I would suggest that you connect your WD My Book directly to your Mac in the mean time.
Your other options would be to either use a Time Capsule (which interestingly does support TM backups to AirPort Disks) or a non-Apple solution like the Drobo FS or HP MediaSmart server.

Perfect Hard Drive To Use With Time Machine?

Hi,
Has anyone found out what's the perfect External Hard Drive to use with Time Machine?
I have experience with a few of WD's My Book models (Essential, Pro and Studio). The problem with all of them is that they automatically keep switching themselves off (spin down) and on (spin up) throughout the day, in an effort to save power. But it's actually quite annoying. The My Book drive will automatically turn itself off, and then turn back on again within the space of one minute. Also, going to use Spotlight (even if you've excluded Time Machine Backups from being indexed) will automatically prompt the My Book drive to turn back on, which introduces a small delay to using Spotlight.
Does anyone make an External Hard Drive, with a Firewire 400 or 800 connection, that stays on ALL the time and doesn't automatically make decisions about when it should spin down or spin up?

I'am using a 500Gb Freecom Pro Hard Drive connected on USB via my Cinema Display. I so forget about it that I often forget to disconnect it from my laptop before leaving the office... Never complained about it
Btw, it does not implements the energy saver Auto turn off/on feature which I don't need cause the time it could mostly be really useful is by night. As it stops when I disconnect the USB and start again when I connect it back.. this is perfect to me.
I must say I'm quite happy with every Freecom product I bought and this one certainly don't break the rule

What brand external hard drive is best with time machine

what brand of external hard drive works best with time machine?

Contrary to the other two replies, I will relate what I've read here: WD drives are fine, but their (cheap?) enclosures are subject to failure. Some buy a bare WD drive and install it in an Oxford Chip external enclosure (OWC / macsales.com would be one source). And, I have two LaCie Quadras and one OWC Mercury Pro - both are generally recommended here. If you want it bootable, most WD drives do not support it:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1787/related/1/session/L2F2LzEvd GltZS8xMzUxNTIzMzIwL3NpZC9ueUFYc1g5bA%3D%3D
Please note: it's good to have an external hard drive which has its own power supply and, as mentioned, FW 800 or USB 3). You also do not need any software that comes on the external - you will most likely need to format it anyway because most come formatted for Windows, but that is easy using Disk Utility.

Use Time Capsule as a Hard Drive via Ethernet for Time Machine

Hi Folks
To summarise a very very long story here goes;
- About 12 months ago my father in law buys a Time Capsule without really knowing what it is for and how it works (I know don't ask!!!!!)
- I set it up for him connected to his wireless router so he uses his router to access the internet and uses the Time Capsule to back up his iMac via wireless with Time Machine. (from what I can see he could have saved himself some cash and just bought an external Hard Drive and connect it via USB to the iMac for Time Machine, but never mind. He has 1 iMac and no other Mac's in the household. His printer is connected to his iMac via USB in the same room and he uses a wireless router to access the internet, since the phone point is in another room)
- All is well until Monday when he tells me he cannot access the internet. After much much trial and error I have eventually managed to get his internet back up and running, but he has somehow managed to erase his Time Capsule.
- I set his Time Capsule back up as it was previously and it starts performing the initial backup again. However at the rate its taking I think it will take well in excess of 24hrs to do that initial
backup. Also so far It has failed 3 times during this initial backup and I get an error message stating it's failed. The setup guide makes reference to performing the initial backup via ethernet as it's quicker.
I'm thinking the best way forward would be to just plug the Time Capsule into the iMac via ethernet and use it purely as a Hard Drive for use with Time Machine. I've tried just plugging in the ethernet cable from the Time Capsule to the iMac, but it doesn't recognise it. Bear in mind that it currently works via wireless, do I need to perform some sort of factory reset or how do I go about telling the the iMac to no longer use the Time Capsule wireless, but just connect via ethernet instead.
Of course I could just forget about the Time Capsule all together and tell him to get a 500gb USB External Hard Drive, plug that in and set up Time Machine with that instead.
Am I missing the point here and can the Time Capsule do a lot more for him, given his current setup.
Thanks

That is true but if you mix your files with the Time Machine backups, Time Machine will have trouble contril disk space when it gets low.
If you are going to do that it is recommended that you partition the drive. Since Time Capsule is not able to partition the drive that means you will have to remove it in order to partition it.
A simple solution IMO is to get another external drive and hang it on the USB bus in the Time Capasule.
Allan

Hard drive not recognized during windows server 2008 setup

hard drive not recognized during windows server 2008 setup

Hi,
Whether the hard disk is recognized in BIOS?
Connect it to another computer to see if it could be recognzied incase the cause is the disk itself. Also please check if it is really a RAID instead of a single hard disk - a single disk should be recognized directly while RAID cannot be recognized until
a suitable driver is installed.
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and un-mark them if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Support, contact [email protected]

Can I view photos and movies from my external hard drive? I used Time Machine and a WD Passport for backup. Since my drive on my MacBook Pro is filling up I was planning to delete some of the movies and photos.

Can I view photos and movies from my external hard drive? I used Time Machine and a WD Passport for backup. Since my drive on my MacBook Pro is filling up I was planning to delete some of the movies and photos. I wanted to see if I could view them from the hard drive. Thanks

Hello, eco1.
Thank you for visiting Apple Support Communities.
This sounds like you are wanting to move your iTunes media folder to an external drive and have iTunes this folder from this location. If this is the case then I would recommend taking a look at the article below.
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1449
Cheers,
Jason H.

Hard Drive Showing up with Time Machine Icon

I have two hard drives in my Mac Pro. I use one as the time machine backup drive. When I set that one up it changed the icon to the Time Machine icon. Today when I logged into my computer my normal drive changed from the regular hard drive icon to the time machine icon. Any ideas?

FYI...
The problem was that before I started using Time Machine, I had used the FW portable drive to back up my laptop using Carbon Copy Cloner (which makes a bootable copy of your HD). I didn't erase the drive before using it as my Time Machine backup disk so both the FW drive and the HD had the same disk ID associated with them so the time machine icon ended up being associated with both of them.
I erased the portable HD completely (yes, I lost my TM backups but that's a reasonable loss) and then reviewed the Startup Disk under System Preferences. Only the boot drive was listed there correctly (before the erasure, both drives showed up there).
I did a complete backup using TM overnight and then rebooted the system this morning....all is well now. The boot disk now has it's correct icon associated with it.
Regards,
Vicki

I just installed a larger hard drive, and used my Time Machine Backup to transfer my info back to the new hard drive. When I open Iphoto, my thumnails are there, but they aren't linked back to the actual photos.I see the photos in my HD. What should I do

I just installed a larger hard drive, and used my Time Machine Backup to transfer my files back to the new hard drive. When I open Iphoto, my thumbnails are there, but they aren't linked back to the actual photos. I see the original photo files in my HD. Is there a way to link the Iphoto thumbnails back to the original files?

Use the Firewire cable and t boot the old Mac's hard drive to the new Mac's desktop and transfer your entire iPhoto folder.
Use Disk Utiliy to erase'format HFS+ Journaled your TimeMachine drive and use the free Carbon Copy Cloner and clone your new boot drive to the external, it's hold option bootable.

Hard drive not recognized (OMG) & Time Machine

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