Help! (Please) Drive won't mount!

I have a 2TB Lacie Bigger Disk Extreme bought about 2 years ago that is now not mounting.
It clicks softly and the light flashes steadily and fast. Lacie cannot help me.
I have tried different cables in all the slots except SATA (as ZI do not have one) and tried multiple power sources. I have even tried some unorthodox methods but I get no luck.
I even put the thing in the freezer overnight and now at least I can see the drive on the USB port in Apple Profiler:
BiggerDisk Extreme:
Product ID: 0x0526
Vendor ID: 0x059f (LaCie)
Version: 1.18
Serial Number: AC577E83350A
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: LaCie Group.SA
Location ID: 0xfd100000
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 0
At this point I am no longer interested in using the drive, but I need the files on it.
My question is twofold:
One - are there any other suggestions for trying to get this disk to mount?
Two - at my cost (of course) is it possible to still get to the files on the drive and just have some repair group move them to a new drive?
This drive was working so well up until about one week ago, and as a video editor I cannot afford to reinvent the project media files that were on this disk.
Your help is greatly appreciated!!
PS - I have researched this subject through these threads but I am sure I am missing some posts as there are so many, hence my post today.

if it doesn't even show up in disk utility the drive is dead. it could be that the problem is just with the drive enclosure. You can crack the lacie enclosure open (no easy task, i warn you), take out the drive and put it into another enclosure. if that works you are in luck, if not then the drive is completely dead and the only chance to get any data off it is by using extremely expensive professional data recovery services.

Similar Messages

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 - tried Disk Warrior, am backing up as a .dmg...will this work?

Hi Guys,
Hopefully someone can help! Fairly desperate situation here...
I backed up around 700GB of data to an Iomega external hard drive (supplied by the client), using my Macbook Pro...all was fine when I unmounted the drive at the end of the backup.
The client took the drive away and called me to say he mounted the drive in Windows (on a PC), and he was able to work with the files for a time, but now the drive won't mount...
I collected the drive, hooked it up to my Mac Pro, but OSX tells me it can't mount the drive. It shows up in Disk Utility in the sidebar, but not on the desktop...
I tried repairing the disk using Disk Utility and with Disk Warrior, both tell me the disk cannot be repaired...
I am currently making a backup of the drive as a .dmg file, using a program called Disk Drill...it's slow as I expected, but I'm still not sure the .dmg will mount...because surely it's just making a copy of the data exactly, of which some part is not mounting (a mount directory or something???)
Is there any way you guys can think of me somehow taking the data and backing it up onto another disk?
Specialist recovery services seem to think there shouldn't be any problem recovering the data, and of couse, as a costly last resort, that's what I'll have to do, but does anyone know how they may go about doing it? It is something vastly complicated such as a command line thing?
Sorry about the length of this question...just hope someone can help!
Thanks in advance...

You didn't say what format (filesystem type) the disk was.
However, I'd say your analysis is probably correct. Something has corrupted the disk. You can make a disk image copy to the .dmg which will preserve the data, such as it is, but I doubt extremely if it will fix any file system corruption.
Furthermore, if both Disk Utility and Disk Warrior have said the disk is unreadable I'm dubious that anything else will magically repair it and that recovery probably consists of snuffling through the disk block by block.
However if the filesystem is FAT (Windows) there may be other (Windows) utilities that can fix it.
You said you 'backed up the data'. Does that mean you still have the original data on your MBP? Are you trying to recover the client's changes?

External hard drive won't mount, even after disk repair.

My Toshiba external hard drive won't mount on my MacBook Pro 10.8.5. I can see it in my disk repair, and when I repair, "the partition map appears to be ok." But I can't access the icon to be able to open the hard drive contents on my desktop. Help!

Hello maccynicwhoalwayshasmacs,
Thanks for the question. After reviewing your post, it sounds like trouble with an external HD mounting. I would recommend that you read this article, it may be able to help you resolve or isolate the issue.
USB and FireWire Quick Assist
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Have a nice day,
Mario

External Hard Drive Won't Mount in 10.2.8

Greetings,
I have a MacBook Pro running the latest version of Tiger. I have a Maxtor 300 GB external hard drive (Mac OS Extended [journaled] ) which I use with my MacBook to store music, video, other media, and backups. I connect that drive to my MacBook via FireWire, normally, but the drive can also do USB.
Since wireless connectivity is so nice, I thought it would be nice to be able to access that hard drive from anywhere in my apartment, without being tethered to the drive by a FireWire cable.
Enter my wife's iBook G3 and Mac OS 10.2.8.
She has this computer from her school where she teaches. It has a G3 processor running at 600 mhz with 128 mb of ram. Since she rarely uses the old machine, I wanted to use it to "serve" my external hard drive to my MacBook.
But when I connect the hard drive to the iBook via either USB or FireWire, it does not mount. I ran Disk Utility and the drive is visible in the pane on the left of the interface, but when I verify the disk I get lots of error messages that say, "Reserved fields in the catalog record have incorrect data."
I don't want to let the iBook repair the disk because I am afraid it my screw the whole thing up and I would lose all my data...not a good proposition.
So, my question: What is going on here? Is this drive simply not going to work with 10.2.8?
I wish I could upgrade the machine to Tiger, but it does not have the minimum system requirements!
Thank you very much for your help. I apologize if I missed something else in the forums that addressed this same issue.
Macbook Pro 2.0 Ghz Intel Core Duo 1 GB Ram 15.4" LCD Mac OS X (10.4.7)

All you need to upgrade the iBook for Tiger is another 128 MBs of RAM. It has both Firewire and USB ports. You do want to upgrade it for what you plan to do. The problem you may continue to have, however, may be due to the fact that the age of the computer is such the disk controller does not support hard drive volumes larger than 128 GBs, which is probably the reason the drive won't mount.
The reason you get DU errors is likely because the drive was formatted using the Intel Tiger version of DU, while you were using the Jaguar version. That's a definite no-no.

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 mount anymore

Dear all,
I have an external HD that would always mount without any problem on my black Macbook.
Last month, I upgraded my system RAM from 2GB to 4Gb. It made the Macbook much faster, but also seriously reduced battery life. In a drive to fix this battery problem I reset the SMC.
Now, I do not know if these issues are related, but the strange thing is that mre or less since then my external drive won't mount anymore. The external drive itself seems fine. And when i plug it into a (powered) USB port of my external display, it will mount. But connecting it directly to the Macbook it won't anymore.
Somehow it seems like the Macbook's USB port is not giving off enough power anymore. Maybe it's because of the SMC reset?
Any ideas????
Thanks

Hello maccynicwhoalwayshasmacs,
Thanks for the question. After reviewing your post, it sounds like trouble with an external HD mounting. I would recommend that you read this article, it may be able to help you resolve or isolate the issue.
USB and FireWire Quick Assist
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Have a nice day,
Mario

Hard Drive Won't Mount After Repair by Second Computer

I have an G4 Cube with OS 10.2 on the internal hard drive (which is full) and OS 10.4 on an external La CIe hard drive (that I use as my main OS). The external hard drive accumulated serious damage that couldn't be repaired by Disk Utility on the internal drive. My copy of DiskWarrior X would not run under OS 10.2 (10.4 was required) and it wouldn't boot from the CD either So I connected the external hard drive to my second computer, an iMAC running OS 10.5. (Unfortunately, I disconnected the external hard drive when the computer was off instead of ejecting the drive by dragging it to the Wastebasket.) The external drive mounted and DiskWarrior easily constructed a new directory, defragmented the files, and eliminated all of the damage on the external hard drive visible to Disk Utility. However, when I reconnected the repaired external hard drive to the G4 Cube, the drive wouldn't mount. Privileges were repaired on both computers with the external drive connected without helping. Being repaired while connected to a higher OS or perhaps simply being connected to a higher OS seems to have left the LaCie external hard drive in a state which couldn't be mounted by an earlier OS.
Following this hypothesis, it booted the G4 Cube from the OS 10.4 Installation CD while the LaCie external hard drive was connected. When I cancelled installation of OS 10.4, I was asked to choose a start-up disk AND OS 10.4 WAS NOW MAGICALLY AVAILABLE ON THE EXTERNAL DRIVE. Simply starting up from a more advanced OS allowed the hard drive to mount.
Shockingly, when I restarted from OS 10.2, the external hard drive was still mounted. Whatever was preventing the drive from mounting was a TRANSIENT STATE, not backwards incompatability.
POSSIBLE LESSON: If a hard drive won't mount on computer A after being connected to computer B, consider booting computer A using the OS on the installation disk from computer B.

If you need to repair a hard drive with OS X installed on it, you must use that same version of OS X to perform the repair. Using another--in this case, newer--OS can cause quite a bit of trouble, as the directories/permissions may be dealt with differently between the OS's.
Seems you've learned this lesson--and luckily you didn't lose anything!
~Lyssa

External drives won't mount after running repair permissions

None of my external drives will mount after running disk permissions. Drives work fine on my mbpro.
None of the external drives show up in disk utilities...
I've try shutting down and unplugging computer. even mini zip drives won't mount.
I'm running 10.4.11
PPC G5 2.3Ghz
Thanks for any help..

Repairing Permission only deals with installer receipts and system components. Not with mounting or accessing hard drives.
Have your run Apple DU First Aid? Disk Warrior? Only use latest version for your OS.
Are you trying to clone your system to external and then repairing permissions? trying to boot from them?
If cloning, make sure the "Ignore Ownership" flag is unchecked before cloning (but do repair permissions on external drives you intend to boot from, such as a Firewire drive).
What type of cases and interface are these?

LaCie external drive won't mount on iMAC

Hi,
My external LaCie external drive won't mount on my iMAC running 10.6.8 but will mount and show up on my PC as working fine, however I am not able to read the information on it as it was formatted for my iMAC. Therefore it leads me to believe this is a software issue.
I have reason to believe someone had changed the permissions and prevented the mounting of this external drive (which belongs to me) so that the contents won't be found on my iMAC.
How to resolve this issue?
Thanks in advance,
Cait

Cait,
Please try a SMC reset, it may take 2-3 attempts for it to work. Look over the instructions below carefully.
SMC RESET
Shut down the computer.
Unplug the computer's power cord and all peripherals.
Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
Release the power button.
Attach the computers power cable.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.
PRAM RESET
Shut down the computer.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
Turn on the computer.
Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
Release the keys.

Firewire hard drive won't mount - Filesystem verify or repair failed.

Hi all - over the last day my lacie hard drive won't mount - i have tried it on various computers with the same result
disk utility can see it but won't mount or repair it reporting the following error
Filesystem verify or repair failed.
any help would be appreciated
best
darren/uk

Try Disk Utility first. It's in your Applications/Utilities folder.
You'll want to select the disk in question, then +Repair Disk+ (not Permissions). This actually repairs the +File System+ that's on the disk.
If that works, you're ok, unless it begins happening frequently. Then you need to save up for a new one.
If DU can't fix it, then one of the others might. Disk Warrior is about $100, and many people here say it's the best. There are others for less money, but there's no guarantee that any of them will succeed.
You can also try just erasing it, and choose +Security Options,+ then +Zero Out Data.+ If that fails, or you have more problems with the drive, you need a new one.

New partition on external hard drive won't mount

I have an 2TB external drive connected by FireWire to my 24-inch, Early 2009 iMac. I created 2 partitions 1 that is about 35 GB and another that is the rest of the 2TB. The 2nd largest partition mounts fine and is being used by Time Machine for my back up. The 2nd one I wanted to use for a Tech Tool Pro eDrive. However the 35 GB drive won't mount. Well it mounts, but after a few seconds it unmounts itself. This is the message I get as it unmounts itself:
8/18/13 7:18:45.788 PM fseventsd[43]: Events arrived for /Volumes/eDrive after an unmount request! Re-initializing.
8/18/13 7:18:45.789 PM fseventsd[43]: creating a dls for /Volumes/eDrive but it already has one...
8/18/13 7:18:46.039 PM fseventsd[43]: disk logger: failed to open output file /Volumes/eDrive/.fseventsd/00000000030d4f84 (No such file or directory). mount point /Volumes/eDrive/.fseventsd
8/18/13 7:18:46.039 PM fseventsd[43]: disk logger: failed to open output file /Volumes/eDrive/.fseventsd/00000000030d4f84 (No such file or directory). mount point /Volumes/eDrive/.fseventsd
Any ideas?
I've checked the partition with Disk Utility and no errors.
Regards,
Chris Johnson

If the drive has more than one interface (USB, FireWire, Thunderbolt, eSATA), try one of the other interfaces.
Check that the data cable is securely inserted at both ends.
Try a different cable.
If you're connecting the drive through a hub, connect it directly to a built-in port on the Mac.
If you're connecting it directly, try a different port.
Disconnect all other devices on the bus, or as many as possible.
Test the drive with another Mac. Test another drive with this Mac.
If the drive is bus-powered, but has an AC adapter, connect the adapter.
Boot into Recovery and launch Disk Utility. Does the volume mount?
Start up in Safe Mode and test.
If the drive doesn't work under any of the above conditions, and if another drive does work with the same Mac, then the drive has failed. You may be able to salvage the mechanism by removing it from the enclosure and installing it in another one, or in a drive dock.

External drive won't mount after plugging in iPhone - MacBook 13'' (2,1)

Hi Support Crew...
I have a 13" MacBook(2,1) running OS X 10.6.2. This is a 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo machine w/ 4 GB RAM & 320 GB hard drive.
Today, I had the Iomega drive plugged in via USB, along with my soundcard (MOTU 828mk2) plugged in via FW. This is a very normal setup for me which has been bug free since I bought this computer over 2 years ago. When I plugged in my iPhone 3G via USB I got an error message which comes up when you incorrectly remove a device. This was strange because I didn't unplug anything, I only plugged in the iPhone. The iPhone was playing music when I plugged it in and I had to unplug and plug is back in to get iTunes to recognize it.
Ever since this happened, my Iomega external drive won't mount. I am able to access it via Disk Utility (and ran the Verify Disk/Repair Disk - everything is "ok"), however I can't access the data on the drive. I really really need the data but of course can't access it to backup.
Disk Utility log:
500.11 GB Ext Hard Disk Media (black text)
Iris (grey text) - I ran Verify Disk & Repair Disk
2010-01-22 14:20:51 -0800: Verify and Repair volume “Iris”
2010-01-22 14:20:51 -0800: Starting repair tool:
2010-01-22 14:20:51 -0800: Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
2010-01-22 14:20:52 -0800: Checking extents overflow file.
2010-01-22 14:20:52 -0800: Checking catalog file.
2010-01-22 14:20:56 -0800: Checking multi-linked files.
2010-01-22 14:20:56 -0800: Checking catalog hierarchy.
2010-01-22 14:20:58 -0800: Checking extended attributes file.
2010-01-22 14:21:00 -0800: Checking volume bitmap.
2010-01-22 14:21:01 -0800: Checking volume information.
2010-01-22 14:21:01 -0800: The volume Iris appears to be OK.
2010-01-22 14:21:01 -0800: Volume repair complete.
2010-01-22 14:21:01 -0800: Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
2010-01-22 14:21:01 -0800: Repair tool completed:
2010-01-22 14:21:01 -0800:
2010-01-22 14:21:01 -0800:
System Profiler shows the drive (on both FW & USB ports when I tried other cords). This drive does not require power and I am not using a USB hub, strictly the laptops ports. And yes, the laptop's power adapter is plugged in.
System Profiler: Device Tree log:
Iomega eGo HDD:
Capacity: 500.11 GB (500,107,862,016 bytes)
Removable Media: Yes
Detachable Drive: Yes
BSD Name: disk1
Product ID: 0x047c
Vendor ID: 0x059b (Iomega Corporation)
Version: 0.01
Serial Number: 000000066273
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Iomega
Location ID: 0xfd300000
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 0
Partition Map Type: APM (Apple Partition Map)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
Iris:
Capacity: 499.97 GB (499,972,702,208 bytes)
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s10
When I tried to run Migration Assistant, I just get the spinning search circle and none of the drives come up, just endless searching.
The fact that I got the "Improperly removed device" error when I plugged in the iPhone makes me think something weird is up and it's not actually the external drive. There is clicking/whining/noise, the drives powers up fine and is recognized by the system but the mount point is now "not mounted".
Does anyone have any idea how to fix? If you live in SF, I will buy you a beer.
J

I meant to say; "There are NO clicking/whining/noise sounds made by the external hard drive"

After full restore from Time machine, my TM hard drive won;t mount

I got my macbook pro back from a logic board repair and restored it fully from Time Machine using my leopard install disc.
Took a while, but it has installed OK. But some applications weren't restored and now the Time Machine drive won't mount on the Macbook at all. When I open up time machine - and try to choose a backup disc nothing comes up.
The drive shows up on a PC when i connect it (but won;t read it as its mac formatted) so I'm pretty sure there;s nothing wrong with the drive.

Also, be aware that TM thinks you got a new Mac, not a new logic board. Thus you won't see your TM backups in the normal way. You'll need the (badly named) +*Browse Other Time Machine Disks+* option (see #E2 in the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip* at the top of this forum).
In addition, when you start doing new backups, TM will start a whole new "sequence," as if it were a different Mac. See #C8 in the Troubleshooting Tip for options.

External Drive Won't Mount

My external backup drive wont mount automatically as it used to with my earlier ibook. I have to re-boot computer to get it to mount. After that it functions properly until the next time I turn it on to do a backup.
I am wondering if there is something in the formatting of this drive which is causing this? I have formatted it a few times since this started to happen but obviously without fixing the problem

Further Details:
1) After normal use of computer connect and turn on external drive. Drive does not mount.
2) Re-boot computer and turn on drive. Drive mounts.
3) Eject drive. Turn off drive. Turn on drive again - drive mounts.
4) Run SuperDuper backup. eject drive. turn off drive. turn on drive - drive mounts.
Thus, it seems (see (1) above), something in the normal use of the computer (not an artifact of the superduper backup process) over a period of time affects the system such that the drive won't mount again.

Help! (Please) Drive won't mount!

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