Hi I was doing a back up on time machine to my samsung 1tb exgernal hard drive and now my mac book pro is not recognising my hard drive???? I am devastated as all my photos are on it. Can anyone please help?

Question

I have tried wating 15min for it to be pick up.....I have shut down my computer and re booted with no luck.  I am devasted as all my photos are on it.  Any suggestions anyone????

Answer 1

Was this your first TIme Machine backup or were you running an update to Time Machine?  If the latter then most of your data is probably recoverable from that disk.  If not proceed with this emergency recovery.  I would not erase the Time Machine backup you already have in case there is data on it you can recover, even if it did not complete.  (I don’t know if Time Machine will wok on a partial backup.)
Before proceeding further you should try to secure your data.  You are close to losing it (or have lost it) and the instructions below will try to make a copy of it without having to boot the operating system.  You will need an external drive which you will erase as part of this procedure.
Boot the recovery partition:
          • Press the power button and as you hear the bong,
          hold down the Command and R keys.
          Once booted, click on Disk Utility.
Format (and erase) the destination recovery disk:
          Plug in the drive you are about to erase.
          Select the volume that is NOT your system disk.
          Click on Partition.
          Pull down under Partition Layout to 1 Partition.
          Click on Options…
          Select GUID Partition Table.
          Name: Emergency Backup
          Format: Select Mac OS Extended (journaled)
          Click Apply.
          Click Partition.
Make a copy of your system disk on the recovery disk:
          Drag and drop the named system disk to Source (often called Macintosh HD):
          Drag an drop Emergency Backup to Destination:
          (Do not reverse these.)
          Click Restore (the lower Restore button).
          Be patient for it to do a full backup of your system disk.
Save the ailing disk/SSD.  You might be able to recover data on it buy placing it in an external enclosure.  Once the disk is in an external enclosure, if the disk will not spin give it a gentle tap.  I have revived several disks that way.  If it still won’t spin then bother with the recovery software below.
If it will spin try using DiskWarrior or uFlysoft data recovery.
          http://www.alsoft.com/diskwarrior/
          http://www.uflysoft.com/
Once your system is healthy again be sure to maintain two reasonably current backups.
More about backups:
Time Machine Basics: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
Most commonly used backup methods:  https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3045
Methodology to protect your data.  Backups vs. Archives.  Long-term data protection: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031