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.

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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).
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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!
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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?
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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

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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.
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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'.
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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.
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boom mind blown

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I swear, if someone can help me solve this problem I will mail you a check for 20 bucks. I'd do more, but I'm pretty broke.
Ok, so yesterday, my computer stopped reading any of the two external 500 gig Lacie drives or any Compact Flash card I put in the reader on my printer. When I go to Disk Utility it says "Gathering Disk Information" and stays like that forever. In fact the program seems frozen, I can't quit it with out Force quiting it. But when I turn off the external drive or pull out the CF card, Disk Utility starts working again.
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About a week ago, my 500gig Lacie external drive didn't show up on my computer. I tried everything and in the end (at the advice of Lacie) I bought another 500 gig drive and had the brains swapped by a pc repair place. (The told me that both drives worked when viewing them on a PC with a Mac reading software.) I connected the new drive up with the movie data on it to my computer and... SUCCESS! It showed up, so I went to transfer the data to a THIRD drive that I "borrowed" from work but during the transfer, the transfer froze.
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THE PRESENT:
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Please help... External Hard Drive not mounting

Hello, Please help me if you can:
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The volume could not be verified completely.
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Hi, Brian, and welcome to the Discussions!
You might perhaps launch System Profiler (from Applications/Utilities) and see if the device is listed there under the FireWire heading in Hardware Overview.
Can you hear the LaCie spin up when powered on?
You might download the free trial version of Data Rescue II and launch it to see if it recognizes the drive. This software often does when DW or Disk Utility won't. If it does, run a scan with it to see if the data on the volume is viewable.
You can test the FireWire port with another Firewire device, or by hooking up to another Mac via a FW cable and trying to boot into FW Target Disk Mode. Visibly check the port at the Mac end first to insure that there are no bent pins at the connector (so you won't damage another device).
You can try resetting a "dead" FireWire port by shutting down, unplugging the external FireWire devices, and disconnecting the Mac's power cord for thirty minutes or so. Before doing this, run Disk Utility's Repair Permissions process on the startup volume first, to see if that corrects it.
Gary
1GHz DP G4 Quicksilver 2002, 400MHz B&W rev.2 G3, Mac SE30 Mac OS X (10.4.5) 5G iPod, Epson 2200 & R300 & LW Select 360 Printers, Epson 3200 Scanner

Hard Drive not mounting on start up, or not mounting at all.

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This is the forum for Intel based iMacs. You need to be posting in the iMac G5 forums for your G5 and the Powerbook forums for the Powerbook.

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Issue:
Mac OS X Tiger
- External HD NTFS Formatted (Win XP)
- Does not mount, but shows in Disk Utility (running on USB2.0)
Ran Disk Utility's Verify Disk:
Invalid B-tree node size
The volume needs to be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
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I don't have Bootcamp.
I believe this hard drive was connected to my pc (win xp) when it may have crashed on me. I think its a recovery issue because I run a 4 bay usb hd box that probably wasnt plugged in when this happened, and those hard drives can be seen my this mac. The crashed computer's hard drive and this external hard drive are the only ones not being read. Can somebody help me? Thanks.
PS- I ran a demo of Boomerang and showed all my files on this external hard drive. It was all under the Regular tab, not the Lost tab.
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http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58042

Hard Drives not mounting

Hi there...I have a QuickSilver 2001 G4 Tower with two internal 60GB HD and one External Wester Digital 120 GB HD which is my boot drive. For a few weeks my internal hard drives would sometimes mount and sometimes not. Now they completely are not showing on the desktop or in any Disk Utilities I have. I examined the ribbon cable and notice that it goes right over the hinge on the G4 door to access the innards of the Mac. There seems to be a dimple in the cable as well as a break in the cable right in one of the cable strands. It is about 1/8" to 1/4" long.
Thinking I had some file issue I did a files system check (command-S, fsck, etc.). Before it ran the file check, One of the lines read:
IOATA Controller Device Blocking BUS
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Machine Name: Power Mac G4
Machine Model: PowerMac3,5
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (2.1)
Number Of CPUs: 1
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L3 Cache (per CPU): 2 MB
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Serial Number:
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Al Hartman
G4 Quicksilver 2001 Mac OS X (10.4.3) SCSI Card, GeForce2 MX, Internal Zip, 2 60gb Internal HD, 1 120gb external HD, 1.5gb of RAM

John...your help has been...well, HELPFUL! LOL
Another question. I have been doing video editing and DVD creation with the Apple Pro Tools...however, my machine is only a 867 mHz and I have limitations on using Motion and HD DVD creation. I have seen much discussion here about processor upgrades. I was wondering if you had any suggestions on that subject. I am kinda partial to Sonnett Technologies hardware. But I want to be sure it will work with the Pro Tools since I have read that some have had issues with some processor upgrades.
I also have a UMAX S900 clone which has a Sonnett Technologies upgrade card which has worked flawlessly (btw, I use the UMAX for all my system 9 work. I figure why clog up my G4 with all that other stuff? I have installed all my System 9 programs including PageMaker 4.2-- wow! I was surprised when that installed!). I had some old files in PageMaker 3. or 2 or something and could not open them with InDesign or Quark or PageMaker 6.5. I looked in my disk storage case and, lo and behold, my original back-up floppies (remember those) when I bought the 4.2 upgrade. Man did that bring back memories-- swapping disks to install-- SEVEN OF THEM!
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I have had this dilemna for quite some time on one computer, then yesterday I went to work on another computer with a different operating system and it had the same sympton.
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Hi
On the 10.5 client select the Finder Menu, select Preferences. Where it says "Show these items on the Desktop" enable Connected Servers. If you're new to 10.5 this can catch you out and make it seem as if there is no connected share point.
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Problem: I recently did a clean install of Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on my Early 2008 Mac Pro. Since then, one or more of my four internal hard drives will not mount at startup, and it's seemingly random which ones will or won't mount; it differs from one startup to the next. Obviously, the boot drive starts up, but the remaining three drives are hit-or-miss.
Troubleshooting So Far: I can open Disk Utility and mount the disk(s) manually, and when I click Verify Disk, the hardware checks out okay. After my most recent startup, I brought up the System Log in Terminal (sudo syslog -B) and found this entry for one disk ("Media 1") that did not mount:
Apr 25 10:40:09 new-host-2.home fseventsd[48] <Critical>: event logs in /Volumes/Media 1/.fseventsd out of sync with volume. destroying old logs. (454 0 68038)
Apr 25 10:40:09 new-host-2.home revisiond[33] <Warning>: Had metainfo
Apr 25 10:40:09 new-host-2.home revisiond[33] <Warning>: UUIDs match!
Apr 25 10:40:09 new-host-2.home fseventsd[48] <Critical>: log dir: /Volumes/Media 1/.fseventsd getting new uuid: 1D55396E-183E-42AA-B788-FEFFF8694C10
Apr 25 10:40:09 new-host-2.home fseventsd[48] <Critical>: Events arrived for /Volumes/Media 1 after an unmount request! Re-initializing.
Apr 25 10:40:09 new-host-2.home fseventsd[48] <Critical>: creating a dls for /Volumes/Media 1 but it already has one...
Apr 25 10:40:09 new-host-2.home SecurityAgent[147] <Notice>: User info context values set for dangreene
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There were no entries for the disks that mounted correctly. Can anyone make sense of this for me? The system jargon is a little beyond me.
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Is "Media 1" the name of the volume, or is it just "Media"?

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My external hard drive is not mounting it is connected by via USB connected directly to my Macbook. When I connect it error "The disk you inserted is not redable by this computer". I can see it on Disk Utility however all options are grayed out. I also tried connecting it to my sister's windows machine same thing not mounting. I've tried this suggestion http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2176 but I got an error "Error: -69877: Couldn't open device".
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Badly needed help!

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I have never had problems with my external hard drive (I just bought it a few months ago), but suddenly it is not mounting on the iMacs at my work or my Macbook pro at home. The drive does NOT show up in Disc Utility, but when the drive is connected via USB, the light on the drive comes on and it is clearly operating. It will not mount on any mac product all of a sudden. I have no idea why this is happening someone PLEASE HELP thanks

you have a MacBook Pro, we are Mac Pro users.
It uses bus-power? has its own power brick?
Formatted for Mac (HFS)? Used on PC Windows and Mac?
Do you have it backed up?
Has there been an inadvertent outage or crash?
MacBook Pro

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I have a pm g5 Dual 2ghz system ,i have connected an firewire 800 lacie 1tb external hard drive to the system,now the problem is it is not mounting on the desktop shows in the diskutility repaired the disk say's disk volume ok any way to mount the external hd on the desktop

Hi Veena, Welcome to Apple Discussions.
And you've tried choosing the volume and pressing the "Mount " icon on the tool bar of Disk Utility?
Have you shut down your Mac and disconnected your firewire cable from both ends and let it sit about ten minutes then reconnect and try. Also, it is important to disconnect the AC power to your Mac, this helps to reset the FireWire port(s).
Do you have TTP or DW, both of which you could use to try to mount it.
It is also possible that you have a bad cable or a bad port, do other FW devices work?
-mj
[email protected]

Hard Drives Not Mounting - Help!

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