Hard drive won't spin up on old iMac

My wife has an ageing Tangerine iMac which she uses nowadays as a data backup machine. It doesn't get booted up very often and the other day, when she tried to boot it, the hard disc wouldn't spin up.
I've started the iMac succesfully from the system CD, but the hard drive still won't spin up, so when I tried to use disk repair, etc, the hard drive's icon doesn't appear in the window.
I've tried zapping the PRAM but to no avail.
Please can anyone help?

If you can open up the case, you can try reviving the hard drive one last time. some people have had luck with sealing the drive in a plastic bag (to keep out moisture) and putting it in the freezer, and then firing it up.
Also you could try giving it a good sharp shock, which sometimes gets you one more spin-up.
1.25GHz Mac mini 1024MB , Airport+Bluetooth  17" 1.67GHz PowerBook 2GB Mac OS X (10.4.8)  iMac Indigo 350MHz (10.3.9)

Similar Messages

HT5622 My Ipod Classic shows a red circle with a cross in the middle. I've completed diagnostic tests which have popped up, however any HP/FW/Hard Drive tests freeze the ipod, as if the hard drive won't spin. What do I do?

My Ipod Classic shows a red circle with a cross in the middle. I've completed diagnostic tests which have popped up, however any HP/FW/Hard Drive tests freeze the ipod, as if the hard drive won't spin. What do I do?
After holding down the Select and Play/Pause button, I was able to restart the Ipod and then it brought me to a Diagnositc test. I have tried doing both the Mannual and Annual test on the ipod however in each test, the ipod freezes on different access tests. The HP (headphones) test, shows the headphones are detected, but then if it tries to play a song to make sure they work it freezes and goes back to the red cross. I have looked at various other questions regarding the FW cable, however I don't believe i have such a cabel. Then the Hard Drive test freezes up and I can hear a ticking noise coming from the drive but it doesnt seem to be spinning. Alongside these test issues, any computer cannot see the Ipod when plugged in (including itunes). Therefore some tests for the USB drive cannot be completed. I do not recall dropping it badly, though I have dropped it previously. Does all this mean there is damage to the drive? Should I instead take it to an apple store?
Many Thanks

The stats look fine. Try the DFU Restore method shown in Corrupt iPod classic. It may pay to disable any anti-virus software and use the staged transfer method to reload data, assuming you get that far.
tt2

In Yosemite: External Hard Drives Won't Spin Down

Since installing Yosemite, my external (and perhaps internal) drives won't spin down in energy saver mode: 'Put hard drives to sleep when possible.' I'm using Seagate Barracuda 2TB internal drives in external Voyager Q drive bays. They seem to be getting a little too warm, I can also feel them spinning.
Thanks!
Steve

Thanks for those diagnostics & remedies. Those are good to know. Performed all of them but the problem persisted. I tried swapping out different drives and discovered that it was one particular Seagate drive that wasn't spinning down. So that was the culprit. Going to check out the Seagate discussions here or on Seagate and see what can be done, probably nothing.
Thanks much!
Steve

Mail for Mac on new hard drive won't import Mail from old hd

I recently installed an additional hard drive (running Tiger), but I kept my old one (running Panther), too, to use as a backup.
After resolving a few snags, the data and apps transferred over OK, but two days ago I (very foolishly) tried to make a change in the name I use as Administrator (or at least that's what I meant to do), and all the apps on my new hard drive forgot their passwords, preferences, etc.
What a pain!
I'll eventually get all the preferences, etc., set; but Mail on the new hd also lost everything--addresses, trash, sent messages; and that's got me baffled.
My old hd still has Mail on it (including addresses, etc.), but I haven't been able to import data from it to Mail on the new hd.
In the new Mail, under the File menu, when I choose "Import Mailboxes" and select the button for Mail for Mac OS X, then navigate to Mail on my old hd, it's faint and can't be selected.
Suggestions of any kind would really be appreciated. (And from now on, I'll just live with my name being misspelled as Administrator!)
Thanks a lot,
Richard
G4 sawtooth Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Richard,
Welcome to the Discussions.
When trying to import a pre-Tiger mailbox created with Mail, use type "Other", instead of type OSX.
However, if you can replace any copy of the Mail folder on your Tiger drive, and any com.apple.mail.plist in the Preferences folder of your Tiger drive with copies from your Panther drive, Mail will open to say it is ready to import Mailboxes, and will then convert all the mailboxes at once.
However when finished, you will need to check for leftover files, that can become problematic, and to check to see if full conversion took place. See:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=413196
and
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=2039086#2039086
Ernie

Boot problem / Hard drive won't spin up and folder icon shows

Hi,
Last week my ipod started giving me this problem, which started by it just stopping in the middle of a song (possibly because of lack of battery power).
When the ipod tries to boot I see the apple icon and hear the disk try to spin up for about 2 seconds. Then it gives a click, spins down, and starts the process all over again for several times until finally showing the dreaded folder icon.
When this happened last week I tried to charge using the cradle, but it didn't help. When I plugged it into the wall socket, VOILA! it worked. I went on my merry way for a week of listening, assuming the problem was all caused by a weak battery. During this week the computer was not able to mount the ipod disk.
Until yesterday, when the battery ran out in the middle of playing. The same exact symptoms occur, but this time the wall socket doesn't help. I think there was a sudden drop in power because the battery was fairly charged and then I saw it at complete zero, and I have also seen the battery icon show for a split second when trying to reset. I have of course tried as many of the 5 R's as I could do, but with no luck.
any help would be greatly appreciated
thanks,
ubloomie

If you can open up the case, you can try reviving the hard drive one last time. some people have had luck with sealing the drive in a plastic bag (to keep out moisture) and putting it in the freezer, and then firing it up.
Also you could try giving it a good sharp shock, which sometimes gets you one more spin-up.
1.25GHz Mac mini 1024MB , Airport+Bluetooth  17" 1.67GHz PowerBook 2GB Mac OS X (10.4.8)  iMac Indigo 350MHz (10.3.9)

External hard drive won't power back up when iMac wakes from sleep

I have the external hard drive connected via USB. I always put my iMac to sleep before going to bed and I wake it up when I come home from work. Except that when I do, the external hard drive doesn't power up. It still shows in Finder, but clicking on it's folders just opens them up as if they were empty. There's no access noise and the drive can't be ejected.I have to switch it's power off and turn it back on for it to spin back up.
At first I thought it was because I had Energy Saver set to power down the drives whenever possible, which works just fine when it's on, the drive powers on and off as needed just as long as the iMac doesn't go to sleep. I turned it off just to make sure and it made no difference. As soon as the iMac goes to sleep and the drives powers down, it will not come back on without a power cycle once the iMac wakes.
I've used this drive in an old Macbook for years without having this problem. The only difference is that the Macbook was on 10.6.8. I was thinking about buying a 4 bay USB enclosure and filling it up with hard drives, but I'm not about to do that if every time I put the iMac to sleep, the whole thing will not power back on without a power cycle.
Any help would be much appreciated.

Not sure if you managed to get this issue resolved yet Marcus, but I too have a similar problem:
Currently I'm upgrading from Leopard to Lion (via Snow Leopard) on both an iMac and MacBook Pro (both Intel), but before I proceed with the OSX upgrade I wanted to back everything up. Thus far I have partitioned an external firewire drive (G Drive - one that is bootable), and cloned each machine using Carbon Copy Cloner to it's own partition (both GUID). There is plenty of space left over on each partition.
The issue - I can boot the OS X from the external drive on the MacBook Pro but not on the iMac.
When I restart and hold down Option on the iMac the only drive that appears is the HDD, not the other two selectable drives that are visible if I boot up on the MacBook Pro. On the iMac in System Prefs > Startup Disc I can see all 3 drives but when I select it and restart, the machine freezes on the grey loading screen and goes no further.
Not that it should make a difference, but there is a 3rd partition on the external drive that is currently empty (for extra storage).
Any help is greatly appreciated - I can't find any relevant answers elsewhere. Thanks,
Dan

My external Seagate hard drive won't show up on my iMac

I've had my Seagate external hard drive connected to my iMac for some time now and have been using it for Time Machine Backups.... Recently I noticed the drive would not show up in the finder and backup began to fail because it couldn't find the drive.

Hello Jwlane64,
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
For more information on this, take a look at:
Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3275
AirPort Time Capsule: Time Machine backups may not mount; "Backup volume cannot be found" may appear
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1170
Best of luck,
Mario

Hard drive won't spin up after sleep

I just replaced my original 80GB HD with a SeaGate 250GB UltraATA HD. It went fine except for one thing. Now when the computer's been idle and the drives have spun down I can't spin up again. Spinning ball. Only option is hard re-start. I've disabled the check box in Energy Saver which works around the problem - drives never spin down. However, I'm looking for a solution which will allow the drives to sleep. Any suggestions?
PowerMac G4 MDD Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Replace it with WD or Hitachi. My guess is it is firmware problem, though to be honest, those were all SATA drives last year (7200.9).

Just got new hard drive installed from apple and my old password doesn't work and it won't let me change it

just got new hard drive installed from apple and my old password doesn't work and it won't let me change it.cant install anything ,pls help,thx

Camera works. Now gotta find out about this mic thing

Hard Drive is not spinning up making rhythmic click sounds

Hello,
My Hard Drive is not spinning up and making rhythmic click sounds. I charged it completely. Tried to reset it but this results only in the Folder-Icon with a support link. It can not be connected to my computer anymore via USB. It is not recognized as a external disk anymore. I tried the disk mode too. nothing helps.
As I can't connect it to my computer anymore I can't reformat it.
Any ideas besides throwing it away...?
Thanks, Juergen
4G Click Wheel 40 Gig Windows 2000

Hello,
If a sad iPod icon or an exclamation point and folder icon appears on your iPod’s screen, or with sounds of clicking or HD whirring, it is usually the sign of a hard drive problem and you have the power to do something about it now. Your silver bullet of resolving your iPod issue – is to restore your iPod to factory settings.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60983
If you're having trouble, try these steps at different levels one at a time until the issue is resolved. These steps will often whip your iPod back into shape.
Make sure you do all the following “TRYs”
A. Try to wait 30 minutes while iPod is charging.
B. Try another FireWire or USB through Dock Connector cable.
C. Try another FireWire or USB port on your computer .
D. Try to disconnect all devices from your computer's FireWire and USB ports.
E. Try to download and install the latest version of iPod software and iTunes
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/
For old and other versions of iPod updater for window you can get here
http://www.ipodwizard.net/showthread.php?t=7369
F. Try these five steps (known as the five Rs) and it would conquer most iPod issues.
http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/five_rs/
G. Try to put the iPod into Disk Mode if it fails to appear on the desktop
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93651
If none of these steps address the issue, you may need to go to Intermediate level listed below in logical order. Check from the top of the lists to see if that is what keeping iPod from appearing on your computer in order for doing the Restore.
Intermediate Level
A. Try to connect your iPod with another computer with the iPod updater pre-installed.
B. Still can’t see your iPod, put it in Disk Mode and connect with a computer, instead of doing a Restore on iPod Updater. Go and format the iPod instead.
For Mac computer
1. Open the disk utility, hope your iPod appears there (left hand side), highlight it
2. Go to Tab “Partition”, click either “Delete” or “Partition”, if fails, skip this step and go to 3
3. Go to Tab “Erase” , choose Volume Format as “MAC OS Extended (Journaled), and click Erase, again if fails, skip it and go to 4
4. Same as step 3, but open the “Security Options....” and choose “Zero Out Data” before click Erase. It will take 1 to 2 hours to complete.
5. Eject your iPod and do a Reset
6. Open the iTunes 7 and click “Restore”
For Window computer
Go to folder “My Computer”
Hope you can see your iPod there and right click on the iPod
Choose “Format”. Ensure the settings are at “Default” and that “Quick Format” is not checked
Now select “Format”
Eject your iPod and do a Reset
Open the iTunes 7 and click “Restore”
In case you do not manage to do a “Format” on a window computer, try to use some 3rd party disk utility software, e.g.“HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool”.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=501330&tstart=0
C. Windows users having trouble with their iPods should locate a Mac user. In many cases when an iPod won't show up on a PC that it will show up on the Mac. Then it can be restored. When the PC user returns to his computer the iPod will be recognized by the PC, reformatted for the PC, and usable again. By the way, it works in reverse too. A Mac user often can get his iPod back by connecting it to a PC and restoring it.
Tips
a. It does not matter whether the format is completed or not, the key is to erase (or partly) the corrupted firmware files on the Hard Drive of the iPod. After that, when the iPod re-connected with a computer, it will be recognized as an fresh external hard drive, it will show up on the iTunes 7.
b. It is not a difficult issue for a Mac user to find a window base computer, for a PC user, if they can’t find any Mac user, they can go to a nearest Apple Shop for a favor.
c. You may need to switch around the PC and Mac, try to do several attempts between “Format” and “Restore”
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2364921&#2364921
Advance Level
A. Diagnostic mode solution
If you have tried trouble shooting your iPod to no avail after all the steps above, chances are your iPod has a hardware problem. The iPod's built-in Diagnostic Mode is a quick and easy way to determine if you have a "bad" iPod.
You need to restart your iPod before putting it into Diagnostic Mode. Check that your hold switch is off by sliding the switch away from the headphone jack. Toggle it on and off to be safe.
Press and hold the following combination of buttons simultaneously for approximately 10 seconds to reset the iPod.
iPod 1G to 3G: "Menu" and "Play/Pause"
iPod 4G+ (includes Photo, Nano, Video, and Mini): "Menu" and "Select"
The Apple logo will appear and you should feel the hard drive spinning up. Press and hold the following sequence of buttons:
iPod 1G to 3G: "REW", "FFW" and "Select"
iPod 4G+ (includes Photo, Nano, Video, and Mini): "Back" and "Select"
You will hear an audible chirp sound (3G models and higher) and the Apple logo should appear backwards. You are now in Diagnostic Mode. Navigate the list of tests using "REW" and "FFW". The scroll wheel will not function while in diagnostic mode. For further details on Diagnostic mode can be found at http://www.methodshop.com/mp3/ipodsupport/diagnosticmode/
Try to do the 5in1, HDD R/W and HDD scan tests. Some successful cases have been reported after the running the few tests under the Diagnostic mode. In case it does not work in your case, and the scan tests reports show some errors then it proves your iPod has a hardware problem and it needs a repairing service.
B. Format your iPod with a start disk
I have not tried this solution myself, I heard that there were few successful cases that the users managed to get their iPod (you must put your iPod in disk mode before connecting with a computer) mounted by the computer, which was booted by a system startup disk. For Mac, you can use the Disk Utility (on the Tiger OS system disk), for PC user, you can use the window OS system disk. Try to find a way to reformat your iPod, again it does not matter which format (FAT32, NTFS or HFS+) you choose, the key is to erase the corrupted system files on the iPod. Then eject your iPod and do a Reset to switch out from Disk Mode. Reboot your computer at the normal way, connect your iPod back with it, open the iPod updater, and hopefully your iPod will appear there for the Restore.
If none of these steps address the issue, your iPod may need to be repaired.
Consider setting up a mail-in repair for your iPod http://depot.info.apple.com/ipod/
Or visit your local Apple Retail Store http://www.apple.com/retail/
In case your iPod is no longer covered by the warranty and you want to find a second repairing company, you can try iPodResQ at your own risk
http://www.ipodresq.com/index.php
Just in case that you are at the following situation
Your iPod warranty is expired
You don’t want to pay any service charges
You are prepared to buy a new one
You can’t accept the re-sell value of your broken iPod
Rather than leave your iPod as paper-weight or throw it away.
You can try the following, but again, only do it as your last resort and at your own risk.
Warning !!!! – It may or may not manage to solve your problem, and with a risk that you may further damage your iPod, which end up as an expensive paper weight or you need to pay more higher repairing cost. Therefore, please re-consider again whether you want to try the next level
Last Resort Level
1. . Disconnecting the Hard Drive and battery inside the iPod – Warning !! Your iPod warranty will be waived once you open the iPod.
In Hong Kong there are some electronic shops offering an iPod service for Sad iPod, the first thing they do is to open up the iPod’s case and disconnecting the battery and the Hard Drive from the main board of the iPod. Wait for 5-10 minutes and reconnecting them back. The reason behind which I can think of is to do a fully reset of a processor of the iPod. In case you want do it itself and you believe that you are good on fixing the electronics devices and have experience to deal with small bits of electronic parts, then you can read the following of how to open the iPod case for battery and HDD replacement (with Quicktimes)
http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/index.cfm?page=Video/directory.html
2.Press the reset button on the Hard Drive inside the iPod – Suggestion from Kill8joy
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2438774#2438774
Have I tried these myself? No, I am afraid to do it myself as I am squeamish about tinkering inside electronic devices, I have few experiences that either I broke the parts (which are normally tiny or fragile) or failed to put the parts back to the main case. Therefore, I agree with suggestion to have it fixed by a Pro.
2. Do a search on Google and some topics on this discussion forum about “Sad iPod”
Exclamation point and folder and nothing else
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2831962#2831962
What should I do with my iPod? Send it or keep it?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=469080&tstart=0
Strange error on iPod (probably death)
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=435160&start=0&tstart=0
Sad Face on iPod for no apparent reason
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=336342&start=0&tstart=0
Meeting the Sad iPod icon
http://askpang.typepad.com/relevanthistory/2004/11/meeting_thesad.html#comment-10519524
Sad faced iPod, but my computer won’t recognize it?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2236095#2236095
iPod Photo: unhappy icon + warranty question
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2233746#2233746
4th Gen iPod Users - are we all having the same problem?
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=2235623#2235623
Low Battery, and clicking sounds
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2237714#2237714
Sad faced iPod, but my computer won’t recognize it
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2242018#2242018
Sad iPod solution
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=412033&tstart=0
Re: try to restore ipod and it says "can't mount ipod"
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=443659&tstart=30
iPod making clicking noise and is frozen
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2420150#2420150
I am not suggesting that you should follow as well, but just read them as your reference. You are the person to make the call.
Finally, I read a fair comments from dwb, regarding of slapping the back of the iPod multiple times
Quote “This has been discussed numerous times as a 'fix'. It does work, at least for a while. In fact I remember using the same basic trick to revive Seagate and Quantam drives back in the mid to late 1980's. Why these tiny hard drives go bad I don't know - could be the actuator gets stuck in place or misaligned. Could be the platter gets stuck or the motor gets stuck. 'Stiction' was a problem for drives back in the 80's. Unfortunately the fix can cause damage to the platter so we temporarily fix one problem by creating another. But I know of two instances where a little slap onto the table revived the iPods and they are still worked a year or more later.”UnQuote

My tx2 hard drive won't start!!! HELP!!!!

My laptop is a a Tx2z-1000 is 2 1/2 years old. For the last 9 months or so its had this problem when booting up. My laptop will turn on but the hard drive won't turn on with it. O can hear the fans running and the rest of the computer trying to start up but the hard drive light stays dark. My monitor stays dark or sometimes will light up and stay black. My laptop will eventually shut itself down. I would like to know how to fix this problem because I'm pretty sure it's not good for my laptop. Also, I want to note that my laptop also has an overheating problem which could be contributing to this problem, I'm not sure. Any help would be lovely. Thanks!

Bummer! But when I looked this drive up, it seems like it's a current model, so I'm assuming it's fairly new?
Unfortunately, I'm not really an expert on external drives, but I'm thinking that if the drive is relatively new, and still spins up, then it should eventually be possible to access it again. Maybe if you could clarify the circumstances of the crash a bit, it will be possible to get this sorted out. I'm not entirely clear on just what happened.
First, could you describe the crash--what exactly did the drive do? Was a cable bumped or anything like that? Or did something happen just out of the blue? And does the drive still spin up?
I am assuming that you checked the obvious things like making sure the USB port was working and the cable itself was OK. I gather that Disk Utility can see the drive, but all the options are grayed out so it can't do anything? Is your PC a different computer, not just Windows on your MBP? I gather that the PC can also see the WD drive, but can't mount it? I know nothing of PC's so I don't know any PC troubleshooting.
One thing that might be worth trying is calling Western Digital and talking to their tech support people. I believe that WD has a 3 year warranty on their drives, and I expect they would be most familiar with the drive and what the problem with it might be. For example, it might be that some component in the enclosure went south and is keeping the drive from mounting. It could be that the failure of some component in the enclosure is what caused the original crash. It might even be worth trying the drive in a different enclosure.
Good luck!

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 Won't Mount Via USB

I have a Western Digital (Model #WD2500...) Hard Drive that is about 3 years old. I initially set it up on a PowerBook running Mac OS 10.3.x. I have two newer laptops both running Snow Leopard, and neither will recognize my drive via USB 2.0.
The weird part is that the drive will mount when connected via Firewire (400 in this case). My newest laptop is on of the new MacBook Pros and it only has Firewire 800. I'm guessing I could probably get a 400 to 800 Firewire cable, but it would be much easier to just use the USB 2.0 connection. Any idea why the drive won't mount over USB 2.0?
I went to the Western Digital site, and there didn't appear to be any new drivers or firmware for this product. The drive seems to run perfectly well over the Firewire connection, so I don't see what the issue is with USB. The documentation that came with the drive indicates that it should work with USB. This is very baffling to me, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks so much!!

In most external drive enclosures that have both USB and Firewire interfaces, the Firewire interface is able to draw enough power to run the drive. Firewire can provide up to 45 watts and up to 30 volts of power per port (not all devices supply the full wattage; my MacBook model provides up to 8 watts). USB 2.0 and earlier can only provide 5 volts at 500 milliamps (up to 2.5 watts). Some newer laptop drives are at or under 500 milliamps, but just barely, and the enclosure itself needs some power.
It sounds like the USB port on your enclosure is bad. Firewire is going to provide faster transfer rates anyway, and you don't have to bother with the power supply. Based on your comments, I suspect it still might be a bad power supply, or maybe it's not the right one for the drive. Those things are easy to mix up.
If you're brave enough to crack the external drive open, what you'll find inside is a standard off-the-shelf hard disk drive, with either a SATA or PATA interface, in an enclosure. You can move the drive to a new enclosure easily.

External hard drive won't shut down after switch from OS10.5 to OS10.4.11

i recently chanded my OS from 10.5 to 10.4.11 (as a programme i want to use is not compatible with leopard), but since i have done this my external hard-drive won't shut down automatically when i shut down my mac. i have to switch it off at the plug instead.
can anyone suggest how i can get it to do this again?
i'm a little concerned that i'm damaging the external drive by turning it off manually all the time..
thanks

Some hard drives shut off with shutdown, some don't. Sometimes hard drives that did shut off with one system will not do the same with a different system. My hard drives which did shut off, prior to 10.5 now stay on.
This is not really a problem as all hard drives spin down after 10- 20 minutes when not in use, whether your computer is on or off. Leaving the drive on is fine, shutting it off manually is fine.
-mj
[email protected]

MAC PRO HARD DRIVE won't boot

HARD DRIVE won't boot past APPLE ICON, grey spinning wheel on grey screen. Tried using install discs, no go past the icon.
Replace small battery inside? replace chips? Logic board replace as last resort. Can't take it away from work at this point to an apple tech.
Had just installed updates to snow leopard and was successful...but went to restart it...and this crap happened.
Thanks for any help.
MT1111
< Edited by Host >

I'll try that tomorrow. Thinking it could also be:
1) The PRAMM battery. found info on that they can wear out close to 5 years. This MAC PRO is close to that now. And I use a lot of power on it.
2) MAC PRO is plugged into a SURGE PROTECTOR, instead of right into the wall outlet.
3) Been doing a lot of FORCE QUITS and HARD BOOT -- unplugging it directly when it wouldn't shut down soon enough -- lately this past year.
I just assumed that this MAC PRO with the XEON QUAD CORE etc., was a heavy duty enough NLE,
that i wouldn't have these problems. It's not fully loaded with all the chips it can carry...and I don't have near enough external terabyte hard drives for storing video and audio files to edit. I've been storing wayyy too much
on the internal hard dives and just have to stop that.
I noticed these past few days that much of the LETTERING for hard drive icons and folders' titles
were starting to look in OVERLAPPING of the lettering. That was my first hint that something was up.

Hard drive won't spin up on old iMac

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for