Hard Drive suddenly incapable of reformating

Hey, I've got a LaCie hard drive here, about 300 gigs. It was going fine for a couple years now until Time Machine gave me an error and stopped. The next morning the disk can't be read, so I enter Disk Utility. Seems it's there, but it's now 0 bytes, read-only and I can't do anything with it. Suggestions?
Btw, I've tried to use DiskWarrior, but it won't see the disk. Maybe another way? It's connected through FireWire, but it has a USB bus too.

Spectacular... Does it show that it's mounted or even partitioned?
Try starting from the Install Disc and going to Utilities -> Disk Utility from there to see if you can verify/repair it.
Maybe try it on another computer to see if it's just an issue with it viewing on this machine.

Similar Messages

  • I just had to reformat the external hard drive that houses my iPhoto library, then restore it from a backup. Now Time Machine is telling me my backup hard drive suddenly does not have the space to complete a backup. I also noticed when I go in to Time Mac

    I just had to reformat the external hard drive that houses my iPhoto library, then restore it from a backup. Now Time Machine is telling me my backup hard drive suddenly does not have the space to complete a backup. I also noticed when I go in to Time Machine, there are only about 5 backups recorded on the ext. hard drive. There were many more before. Any idea what happened and if I have to buy a new back up hard drive?

    Hallo  Kieth ,
    I am not quite ready to restore the full iphoto library , as I have days of work re - imputting titles,descriptions and enhancement . I hope that your suggestion works , as I use my Macbook basically to work with digital photography. Through time , I will need to delete my library to recover more disc space and I would hate to have to spend more time re - imputting titles and descriptions all over again .
    Thanks for your interest and advice.
    regards  - Alan

  • My Western Digital external hard drive suddenly stopped showing up on my Macbook Pro and disappeared from Disk Utility. It works on a PC.

    My Western Digital external hard drive suddenly stopped showing up on my macbook pro and it disappeared from disk utility. I have tried making invisible files visible but nothing has worked and my hard drive shows up on a PC but not my Mac anymore.

    What is the manufacturer of the external and how old is it? Does it have its own AC power supply or is it USB bus powered?

  • External hard drives suddenly changed to read only

    Three of my external hard drives suddenly changed to read only. These hard drives have been working on my macbook pro for months. When I click on get info 'read only' shows up and there is no lock icon nor is there a window that shows name | permissions, also in disk utility the 'verify disk premissions', 'verify disk', 'repair disk', and 'repair disk premissions' buttons are ghosted and I can not select them. I have not made any changes to my computer and I have read many other posts and have not been able to find a solution.

    About a hundred times with no luck. Some of my research is leading to Western Digital, there may be a problem with the drives' 'smartware' software. I've been using this drive for months and I never used the 'smartware', but I tried it anyway with no luck. I just remembered that four days ago I had this drive plugged this drive into an Iomega wireless storage device and it seemed to work fine. Now the wireless storage device can't find the drive at all. I just need to know if there is a way I can change the permissions back to read/write, otherwise I will have to buy another drive and transfer all the data to the new drive and re-formatt the wd drive.

  • After four months my Imac hard drive suddenly began making very audible noises.  What should I do?  audible noises.  What should I do?

    After four months my Imac hard drive suddenly began making very audible noises.  What should I do?

    Back up your system, make a Genius Bar appointment and take it in. If it's 4 months old you are still on warranty, let them fix it.

  • My hard drive suddenly went from 52 gigs free to 22 gigs- is there any way to figure out what happened?

    my hard drive suddenly went from 52 gigs free to 22 gigs- is there any way to figure out what happened?

    Perhaps this may be of help...
    Where did my Disk Space go?

  • My external hard drive suddenly won't mount.

    I have a mac 0sx version 10.5.8.  My WD hard drive suddenly won't mount.  Tried running a repair with disc utility-no luck.

    Your best bet is DiskWarrior...
    http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

  • External Hard Drives Suddenly being removed:

    I have two different external hard drives that I use for storing video (1 Seagate and 1 Western Digital). Over the last few days I have had them powered up one at a time. After about 10 minutes, I receive an alert that says that a “device wasn’t properly removed. Material stored on the device could be lost or damaged.”
    The Icon for the Ext. HD has disappeared. A few minutes later it re-appears only to have the same thing happen again in the next 10 or 15 minutes.
    The Ext HDs are connected via the firewire ports on the back of the computer.
    Per a one to one suggestion, I unchecked the "Put hard Disk(s) to Sleep when possible. It didn't help.
    Anyone have a similar problem and know the Fix? It's two different brands of ext. HD, so I think it's my computer and not the ext. HDs.
    These are my specs:
    Model Name: iMac
    Model Identifier: iMac4,1
    Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
    Processor Speed: 2 GHz
    Number Of Processors: 1
    Total Number Of Cores: 2
    L2 Cache (per processor): 2 MB
    Memory: 2 GB
    Bus Speed: 667 MHz
    Boot ROM Version: IM41.0055.B08
    SMC Version: 1.1f5

    same thing happened to me on my iMac the other day
    the WD xdrive (plug 800fw) suddenly stopped working and did not show in finder (worked perfectly for 2 months)
    ran a diagnostics program downloaded from WD's site to a PC and everything worked fine
    i have another xternal plugged into usb so my guess - PROBLEM W/FIREWIRE!!

  • External Hard drive suddenly will only read! How can I make it read/write again?

    Hi folks,
    I'm working with a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 320gb External Hard Drive on the imacs here at my university. I have it formatted to ExFAT so that I could use it with my pc as well but I've never had to so far so it's only ever been used on the uni imacs.
    It's been fine for working on media projects until suddenly when i came back to uni after the Christmas break I went to continue working on a film project and realised the external hard drive now said read only??
    One thing I did was to put all of my work from last semester (which is everything that was on the hard drive into a single folder) could that have caused the problem?
    And does anyone know how i can reset my permissions to read/write without causing damage or risk to the files on the hard-drive as I can't clear the disk (i have no where else to store the 185gb of video footage).
    I'd really appreciate it if anyone could tell me how i can fix it? I know how to do all of this on my pc but i've no idea with the mac as i only use it for my media projects here in the university.
    Thanks!
    DrF ;-)

    Out of curiosity , will this method also work for an external drive formatted to NTFS.. I have a lot of data that I have nowhere to Float while re-formatting the drive , so If this method would allow me to keep the data and still fix the problem that would be great !!  At the moment the drive is formatted to NTFS and permissions say Read/Write , but I can only Read.. Very Frustrating as my mac drive is running low on space and performance is being affected.. Any help appreicated !!

  • External hard drive suddenly become read only

    For those who have been using an external hard drive on OS X (using NTFS file system) without any problem and suddenly one day the system has started mounting it as a read only file system, this is because the file system right now has some inconsistences.
    As it happened last night to me i started googling for a quick solution to solve the problem. But i didnt find anything out there. At least at first glance. So then i checked the system logs of the system in order to get some sort of specific information about why that was happening (in OS you have an application that makes so easy to have a look through the system logs and its in /applications/utilities/console.app). In my case, and i repeat, IN MY CASE, the problem was the following:
    21/07/11 18:59:02          kernel          NTFS-fs warning (device /dev/disk1s1, pid 2140): ntfs_system_inodes_get(): $MFTMirr does not match $MFT.  Will not be able to remount read-write.  Run ntfsfix and/or chkdsk.
    So afterwards once known the problem, was as easy as to mount the external HD in windows and execute the command chkdsk /f (google about the usage of the tool if dont know how it works).
    Alternatively, you have the Linux option using the ntfsfix command, but you will need to install the program before that (if dont have it previously in your system) or otherwise you won't be able to use it (sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs)
    Hope it helps.
    Marc

    I got an error message that my External Hard Drive was now 'read only'. Having scoured the various forums looking for clues as to why it had happened I found numerous suggestions, all of which seemed overly complicated and beyond my basic understanding (I'm old enough to remember when Macs 'just worked').
    Anyway, among the suggestions on how to correct this I found what seemed like an overly simplified one - 'Don't switch on your external hard drive until after you've booted up'. Since I tend to leave mine on all the time, I immediately turned it off and back on again and ran Time Machine in hope rather than expectation. Would you believe it? It backed up as normal first time. Hope it works for anyone else having the same problem.

  • External hard drive suddenly became "unreadable" and the disk utility offers not repair options.  The drive is visible in disk utility but may not be mounted... any suggestions?

    I have a WD My Passport 070A Media 2.0 TB external hard drive that has suddenly become unreadable on my laptop (MacBook Pro circa 2006 with 10.4.11) and I have tried on a MacBook Pro 2011 running 10.6.8 with the same results.  I had tried opening disk utility to repair the drive, but on both machines the drive is visible in the left column, with no indentation below the drive.  When I select the drive in the first aid portion the only options highlighted are info and eject...  I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions to repair the drive.  I am currently in Belize and am not home for 3 weeks yet.  I'm hoping for a fix while I am down here, otherwise I may have to wait...  I appreciate any assistance!
    -Christina

    Hi Christina,
    It's quite possible the AC PSU has given out, if It's only Bus powered as it appears, that's the worst idea ever & asking for eventual problems.
    What Format is it?
    Did you install any WD SW?
    Your best bet is DiskWarrio...
    http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/
    But others that may work…
    Drive Genius…
    http://www.prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius.php
    TechTool Pro…
    http://www.micromat.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=83

  • Music from External Hard Drive suddenly not playing...

    The other day I disconnected my external hard drive to use it elsewhere, plugged it back in later, then suddenly none of my songs located on it could be played on itunes...
    Funny thing is that if I right click and go "show in windows explorer" it takes me to the correct directory on the external...however when I go to play the song the small speaker icon appears next to it, however without the "sound waves" that appear when a song is playing....
    Can anyone help me out???
    Thanks

    If you have relocated the media folder to an external drive and then start iTunes with the drive disconnected iTunes will reset the media folder to the default location on the internal drive. It will also assume that all files on the drive are "not present". Correct the location of the iTunes Media folder, then close iTunes, wait a few moments and open it again. iTunes should now find your files.
    tt2

  • External hard drive suddenly not readable

    Help!
    I have an external 160GB hard drive (LaCie; Firewire connection) that has suddenly stopped mounting on my desktop. I have used this drive with no problem for ages and with OSX 10.4.
    Now I get the message:
    'The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer.'
    With three options: Initialize; Ignore; Eject.
    I have lots of valuable data on this drive that I need to access. What can I do? I have looked at Disk Utility and the disk shows but still will not mount.
    Please help!

    External hard drive spontaneously unmounted? Try these tips:
    NEW FIRMWARE: Try updating your external hard drive's firmware, which is available from your drive manufacturers Web site--or just use VersionTracker's (www.versiontracker.com) search function to find it. Be sure to back up your data before applying the update, and carefully follow the manufacturers instructions.
    OUT OF iSIGHT: If you're using an iSight camera while you're using a FireWire drive, the camera may be interfering with the drive's ability to stay mounted. Try temporarily disconnecting your iSight and moving it to a separate FireWire port. If you have multiple FireWire devices, try using a FireWire hub.
    POWER PROBLEM: A faulty power adapter could be causing your drive to unmount. Your drive may not be getting enough juice to stay on, causing the drive to turn off and thereby unmounting it from your Mac. Alternately, the power adapter may not be providing a steady amount of power, causing your drive to turn on and off. Try replacing the adapter. If you can't get a replacement adapter from the hard drive manufacturer, try your local electronics store. Just make sure the adapter you choose has the same connector and input/output voltage. you can find the input/output voltage on the adapter itself.
    Cheers!
    DALE

  • External hard drive suddenly won't mount

    Although I've not had a problem with this drive in the past, it all of a sudden won't mount. It has all my music on and stalled while I was using iTunes, the timer wheel came up and was still the same after 20 minutes so I closed down. Now the drive won't mount at all so I can't even try repairing the disk. I've tried swapping from firewire to USB cables and also going through a hub, neither have worked.
    It's a Lacie and the power light stays continuously orange on it and it feels like it's working overtime.
    PLEASE HELP!

    A little bit more on this... I looked at the instructions for the Lacie and it said that some smaller laptops may require a power cable via a USB port and back into the Lacie, which now works but I'm wondering why this has happened all of a sudden and can I rectify it??
    I've deleted a load of stuff off my ibook hard drive, like photos etc, thinking that would help but it hasn't. Plus, I've recently installed an extra 1gb power card.
    What can I do to avoid having to plug all these peripherals in to access my music?

  • Second Hard Drive, Sudden Motion Sensor

    Back in the fall I put a SSD in my 2007 MacBook Pro. It's working perfectly. I found the "OptiBay" product, which basically replaces your optical drive with an adapter for another hard drive. I haven't received it yet, but when I do I plan on installing it with a traditional hard drive. My question regards the sudden motion sensor (SMS). I disabled it because it's not needed for the SSD, but I was planning on re-enabling it for my secondary that I will be installing. I'm still going to boot off the SSD, though. Is there a way, or terminal code, to assign the SMS to a certain disk? I'm assuming it will just disable the root drive in the event of "sudden motion," but would this affect a secondary drive?
    I'd love for there to be an option to change the identifier, from disk0s2 to disk0s3, but I have a feeling it isn't possible or would be infinitely more difficult... thanks.

    Most drives are available with the equivalent of an internal SMS. You just have to check the specs. Drive manufacturers often offer two versions of their drives... one with and one without a SMS. If you get a drive with the SMS built in, you can just leave the MacBook's internal one disabled.
    Here is an example of one of the most popular drives:
    http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/laptops/momentus/momentus5400.6g/
    Seagate's SMS technology is referred to as G-Force. Note the product number: 5400.6_g. The "g" denotes the drive has a "G-Force" sensor.

Maybe you are looking for