Hard drive not showing up in disk utility

We had a couple power outages a few days ago.
But everything worked fine last night when I shut down.
Started up--no chime--and got question mark in folder flashing icon.
Started up with G5 OSX install disk 1. Ran Disk Utility and hard drive DOES NOT show up. Checked again and again. Same thing. Zapped PRAM and did the "X" key thing (according to Apple documents). Now it starts up with chime. Still no hard drive.
I read other older posts with similar problems. Sentiment was that the hard drive was fried.
I have most clients work backed up. But if I can retrieve their data, I'd give up the whole computer. I really need that data. What are my chances that the hard drive is gone? I don't want to spend alot of money with an apple tech out here if its probably dead. I'll just buy a new hard drive and start all over.
Took the Tech Tool disk that came with Apple Care (on another computer; I don't have Apple care on this G5) and ran diagnostics. It just hangs up at "Scanning Volumes" with nothing labeled in the Volume drop-down menu.
Please advise!

Yeah, dadof3, you were right. I dropped it off at a authorized repair shop in Evanston, IL (lapin systems) and they told me the bad news. So they're putting in a 250 GB startup drive w/a new Tiger system AND putting aside a new Lacie 250 GB external firewire drive for me.
Instead of archiving jobs once a month and never doing back-ups, I'll be backing up my production folders DAILY with that external drive. I'll unplug it from the power supply upon completion of the backup.
Thanks for the last-ditch suggestion. I'll do the freezer thing and then connect to bay 2. Meanwhile, I'll be calling clients and dreading revision or re-order requests from jobs started between September and now (gulp). At least I have backups on another computer for my latest jobs.
This was a terrible lesson. Bitter, yet humbling. To all those who use their computers to put food on the table, don't be a fool like me! NEVER go without daily backups for jobs in progress or jobs not archived.

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Disk Description : WD Elements 1023 Media                      Total Capacity : 500.11 GB (500,105,740,288 Bytes)
Connection Bus : USB                                                               Write Status : Read/Write
Connection Type : External                                                     S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported
USB Serial Number : 575837314135304D36373132        Partition Map Scheme : Unformatted
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Hello,
I have just experienced the same thing!
Although my external drive shows in Disk Utility, it does not show in Finder.
And the Verify/Repair buttons are also greyed out.
Also, although the drive is 2TB. DU shows it as having Total Capacity of only 4.14GB! (Which should be the Free Space).
I was wondering if you solved your problem, & if so, would you share your solution.
I´m afraid to Erase in case I lose all my Data on the drive.
Thanks in advance for your reply!

Western Digital drive not showing up in disk utility--Help please.

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http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MOTGFW400/ but similar items are available from many vendors like Newegg. About $60 for the basic model. More money can buy additional interfaces on the enclosure like FW800 and USB2; an AC adapter instead of letting the firewire bus power the drive (usually OK).

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Weilishu wrote:
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that's my problem...
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Thanks in advance!!!
Cheers!

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Hey!
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Mac format is different than windows format. Fat32 is recognized by both systems, but has its limitations. You just need to reformat the drive to NTFS on a PC. I believe HFS+ was probably what your original drive was. If it was Fat32, it would have been recognized on the PC.
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Hi all,
So a few days ago my hard drive failed on me completely. And I didn't back up before that.
Yeah.
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Internal hard drives won't appear in Disk Util

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I unplugged the cable and battery, held the power button for over 5 secs, then just let it sit for about 10minutes with no power source while I thought about this. I put the original drive back in, booted into OSX, and put the new hard drive in an external USB enclosure. I formatted it while in OSX, then rebooted into the install disk and installed OSX on it while it was in the USB case. It took the installation more quickly (about an hour and a half...still not 20min like my old 7200rpm Hitachi 200g), then I booted into its OSX while in the USB drive. It booted ok, so I downloaded the updates and clicked to install them. It then went into a revolving restart. Eventually I decided it was not doing this because it was happy so I shut it off.
I swapped the hard drive out with another new one, and this one would not complete an installation while inside the computer either. It acted similarly while in the USB case. HOWEVER it would always show up as unmounted after a restart and would not recognize the drive inside the computer as a bootable disk.
I put my original drive in there to give up, and it gave me the ? folder. I booted to the install disk and it did not show up in the disk utility. I put my old hard drive in the USB case, booted to the install disk, and it showed that it was there, but unmounted and it could not repair the file system.
I repartitioned my hard drive (i have time machine working..not a huge setback) in the USB case and put it back in the computer. It still would not show up in disk utility. I put it back in the USB case, installed OSX onto it (in about 20min), restarted a couple times, saw that it was working, put it into my computer, and got the ? folder again.
I went out and bought a stardard 160GB SATA 5400rpm Seagate drive to try in there, and this fresh drive is not recognized inside the computer either when I boot into disk utility.
The brand new hard drive WILL show up in Disk Utility when I boot to it from the install disk, but it will not survive a complete installation.
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I'm originally a Windows slave, so I can only think in terms of AHCI or SATA-card drivers, or screwed up bios. But this is all pre-os-boot, and the apple firmware seems to be pretty automatic in picking the right settings to see stuff.

I kind of feel like drawing a flowchart to show all that I've tried. Its difficult to keep everything intelligible while listing the entire last week's efforts at 2:45am. :-/
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41951
I also explained it here, perhaps a bit differently. Maybe some reply there might spark someone's memory of a possible problem. I understand the nature of computers (been 100% geek for 20 years), but I'm hoping there's someone out there with the specific Apple expertise to help me out. Eventually the processes I've taken and my specific situation will become clearer as the questions widdle away at this.
My original 7200rpm SATA drive that works fine won't show up when connected to the SATA cable. I've repartitioned it with HFS, and repartitioned it as free space in the USB enclosure. It simply won't show up in Disk Util. Same with the brand new test SATA drive.
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If I install OSX on them while in the USB enclosure, that works, but they will not mount when connected to the SATA cable inside the lappy. The platter style SATA drives won't even be recognized...
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I have a mid-2010 iMac and just purchased a 2TB TC, can't join existing wireless network with AC standard so attached to iMac via ethernet with TC wifi turned off. How do i access TC now? not showing up in disk utility or on desktop. working fine with TM

I have a mid-2010 iMac and just purchased a 2TB TC, I just found out that it can't join existing wireless network with new AC standard so attached to iMac via ethernet with TC's wifi turned off. How do i access TC now? not showing up in disk utility or on desktop. It is working fine with TM. My cheeper seagate drives etc kept crashing, so i didnt trust cheeper back up options anymore. Connected those drives to TM via firewire and could see the drives and access them.
Also, I didn't want to bridge TC with my new fios router that I paid 100 dollars for, to get N speed and also paying 10 dollars more a month for fast speed. I heard that bridging slows down everything and then there can be port issues with mail etc. I connect to the internet via airport only and it is pretty fast. Getting over 50mbs downloads and over 30mbs uploads. Plus everything in my home it connected to my fios router, airport express for music streaming, two apple tvs, vuezone camer system. I really didn't want to monkey around too much with my system. But are there other options to connect the new TC. Can't find info anywhere for this and called apple who gave me the info above. after hanging up, i see that i cant access my TC and I am wondering if i would have to reset it to turn wifi on again to make changes to the drive, turn off blinking light or repair it in disk utility if it should become corrupted.
For other with similar issues i did solve some other problems: when i connected it to my ethernet port on my iMac wifi stopped working. Found that I had to turn off the ethernet in the system>network screen, but then TM didn't see the TC so i restarted after changes and then it saw it.
Now a rant. I can't believe in this wireless age that Apple would make a product that cant join a wireless net work. The apple rep said i could return it and look for the previous TC that would join an existing wireless network. Are we going backwards?
Thanks!
lennydas

Ok... it is getting a bit clearer but there are still some questions.
I connect to the internet via airport only and it is pretty fast.
I was assuming airport in this statement in your first post meant the TC or the Express.. but I now realise we are still in the mass confusion stage where apple calls everything wireless an airport. So what you mean is the airport internal card of the computer??
Also, I didn't want to bridge TC with my new fios router that I paid 100 dollars for, to get N speed and also paying 10 dollars more a month for fast speed. I heard that bridging slows down everything and then there can be port issues with mail etc.
I think this is mistaken.
Putting the TC in bridge mode plugged into your FIOS will not slow the network.. nor will it cause mail or port issues.. in bridge the TC is just a fancy WAP and switch plus the network hard drive.
If the computer is close it will be faster than the FIOS.
You can run both wireless networks with different names.. so it is clear which is which. But you can also setup roaming so the computers themselves pick which is the best wireless.
I tried extending the wireless net work and tried joining wireless network, but the TC kept crashing and I had to keep resetting the TC. the Apple support person said these, extend wireless network and joint wireless network, are no longer a connection option with the new TC because of the new AC protocol.
Thanks again!
You cannot extend to a non-apple wireless router.
You cannot use join a wireless network because when you do the ethernet ports will be cut off.
But that has not changed.. I don't think Apple support is correct.. there has been no change with the AC model.. it is simply a fact that apple routers do not work in join wireless mode other than as a dumb client. The same applies to AC as to the earlier version.. but I have asked another person to check this.
Join in the express is the only apple router that still allows an ethernet connection.
For now you best use of the TC is bridged to the FIOS. Wireless you can sort out between several options.

Hard drive not showing up in disk utility

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