IBook is about to die, external HD will not mount!!! help!!

this evening my wife's iBook crashed and it took a very long time to get it back up, I kept getting the folder with the ? inthe middle of it, well it's up now but I can't get the external Lacie HD to mount on the desktop so that I can back up her imortant information. can anyone help me out? I am afraid this iBook will crash again real soon. Should I put in the install CD's and reboot and do disk utility? I'm only afraid that any restart will not allow me to go back and retrieve her files. thanks
jason

actually since my powerbook will be the target HD to where I am going to store the files, isn't the iBook the host and thus the powerbook has to be restarted in the disk mode?? that was my assumption from reading the info. anyhoo, a few attempts at that did not work. I've downloaded several files on my PB, applejack, superduper and Mac OSX combo 10.4.10PPC which I've read in some of these posts will help. I'm now burning them onto a cd in hopes that they will be read on the iBook. if that does not work, the next step will be dragging onto my desktop, extensions.kextcache and com.apple.kernelcaches from the library and doing a restart on the iBook. would you suggest adding to this list your launchservices too or do that after?? thanks,jason
fyi, I also booted from my TIger CD and did a whole first aid, repair, verify etc, with no luck and actually no problems came up either.

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External drives will not mount if wi-fi is on

I was really unsure where to post this. If you think it should be in a different thread then let me know.
My problem is this. I have a Macbook that I use at home no problem. I teach at a college where there is a wi-fi connection that my Macbook automatically connects to. Recently, I have discovered that any external drives will not mount until I switch the wi-fi off. Additionally, almost everything I try and do causes the spinning beachball for 10 minutes or more at a time.
I have searched the net and cannot seem to find any reference to this problem anywhere else. Any ideas at all why this might be happening will be much appreciated.

It was not until Mac OS X 10.6.4, not possible to run on a 10.2 machine, that ExFat was supported.
Many older Macs also will not recognize GUID formatted partitions made to boot Intel Macs either.
10.2.3 is the first system to support Apple Partition Map HFS Extended (Jornalled).
There may be NTFS support based on my tip here:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3003

External drives will not mount if the wi-fi is on!

I have had no replies where I had previously posted so I thought I would try here as I think that it is mainly an Airport problem.
My problem is this. I have a Macbook that I use at home no problem. I teach at a college where there is are two wi-fi connections that my Macbook automatically connects to depending on where I am in the department. Recently almost everything I try and do causes the spinning beachball for 10 minutes or much more at a time. Additionally, I have discovered that any external drives will not mount on my laptop, unless I switch the wi-fi off! No-one else is having any problems at all.
One of the wi-fi connections is an Airport Extreme. Each morning my laptop gets the message that there is a problem and I need to update the firmware to 7.5.2. (I originally set the Airport up through my laptop) I am very wary of doing this as everything is working fine for the other 20+ laptops in the department and I have read lots of reports of problems with this update.
I suppose my questions are these - 1 Does anyone have any idea what is going on with my laptop? 2 What should I try doing to solve this issue?
I have searched the net and cannot seem to find any reference to this problem anywhere else. Any ideas at all why this might be happening will be much appreciated.

It was not until Mac OS X 10.6.4, not possible to run on a 10.2 machine, that ExFat was supported.
Many older Macs also will not recognize GUID formatted partitions made to boot Intel Macs either.
10.2.3 is the first system to support Apple Partition Map HFS Extended (Jornalled).
There may be NTFS support based on my tip here:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3003

External HD Will NOT Mount

Hello,
My name is Evan Jacobs. I have an external HD that will not mount. I have tried resetting the FIREWIRE PORT (I think that's what it's called), but that has not worked. I also have Norton UTILITIES 8.0 but the drive isn't showing up there either. Any help on getting this drive to mount would be great.
-Evan

Have you tried to find the drive with Disk Utility? Does it show up?
Do you have a dual boot w/ OS9? If so give that a try - in some cases drives that won't mount under OSX will under an earlier system. If it mounts, get EVERYTHING off it ASAP.
Do you have a copy of Diskwarrior? If not, you may want to think about picking up a copy to run, though it may not do anything for you.
You need to determine if the problem is your disk or your computer. Do you have a friend with an apple or an apple store nearby that you could try the disk?
good luck.
x

My 750GB Maxtor external HD will not mount on my iMac 10.7.5 for Time Machine

This external drive has worked in the past; I had used it to successfully back up the same computer I'm using now. After attempting another long overdue backup, it aborted mid-way. I discovered some chew marks on the power cord and replaced it. The replacement power cord is the proper one, and the light on the Maxtor is on indicating power. I've tried two different USB spots, both of which work on other devices. However, now the Maxtor will not mount. My intention was to completely erase the Maxtor and start clean. Never got a chance. I've verified that the Finder Prefs have external disks checked. Finder doesn't "see" it. Disk Utility doesn't "see" it. Time Machine doesn't "see" it. My desktop doesn't "see" it. Another external I have (WD My Passport Ultra) does mount. Is OS 7.5 the problem? How do I verify that the Maxtor is just plain busted before I throw it out the window? Or have I already proved that? It was never used enough to fail, it seems to me. Anybody?

Rats. Thank you for the quick reply, rkaufmann87. I'm not awash in other USB cables of this type, but will hold out hope until I get my hands on one. Time to shop for another external probably. Thanks again. [sighs]

WD External HD Will Not Mount

I installed Lion when it was first released and have had no issues. Suddenly now my WD 1TB external hard drive will not mount. I can see it in Disk Utility. I can run "verify disk, it reports that there are no problems. I run repair disk for grins, it reports no problems. The only issue is that it will not mount. I have not intalled any updates or software lately so I don't think there is any conflict there.
I have seen folks reporting issues with WD external drives after installing Lion, but this one has been working with Lion until a few days ago. Has anyone else see or figured out this issue?

http://support.wdc.com/

External disks will not mount on new OS install

Hi,
I just had to reformat and reinstall all the OS and applications on a imac g5 for a friend of mine. I have updated all the os to 10.5.8 and have installed user software iWork, iLife, Microsoft office and Roxio's Toast 10 and a family history software called Reunion. That is all that has been done to this new install.
I went to transfer her personal files back and I can't get any external disks to mount. They will all show in disk utility but will not mount the desktop. I have tried 2 different drives formatted in Mac OS Exteded Journalled as well as MS-Dos Fat32. I have also tried flash drives formatted in each of these formats. All of these drives are readable on several other computers I have here, including a 2008 Macbook Pro running Lion, 2010 iMac running Snow Leopard as so on.
When inserted in the iMac G5 I can see all the drives in disk utiltiy and was able to even erase and reformat a drive to differnt format ( mac extended to Fat32) without issues to mount on the other computers.
Cd's mount just fine.
Anyone have any clues as to what's going on? Any thoughts are most welcome.
Thanks
pax

BDAqua wrote:
What exactly shows in System Profiler>Hardware>USB for those drives?
Boot from the Install Disc & see if they show up, not grayed out in Disk Utility.
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu at top of the screen. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
We were thinking along the same lines. While at home I dug up a firewire enclosure and put a bootable GUID formatted drive in it (that I had in one of the usb enclosures) and started her computer holding down the option key and then chose to boot from the external firewire. All usb drives are now mounting upon connection. I asume that her drive has bad sectors on it (even though the SMART status says it's OK) and is not loading all the drivers properly for USB to mount. I was suspicious from the beginning that the OS was corrupt when she first had me look at it. It was at that point that I booted it in target mode, connected to my Macbook Pro, and then CCC'd to a usb drive that I had. I then had a couple of difficulties installing the new OS. Should have known......
I am now going to put a new drive in it for her and she'll be up and running.
Thanks so much for your help and thoughts that got me thinking as well.
pax

External Drives will not mount

Hi guys ... this is my first post in these forums, so sorry if it is in the wrong category.
I have a Mac Pro, purchased in Feb this year. I have an iOmega Ultramax firewire drive, that is partitioned into four disks.
I have had time machine running well, and it backs everything up onto a second iOmega drive I have.
Yesterday, before I left for work, I saw TM was sbusy backing up. The finder was not responding but I just left it, as didnt have time to loko into it before leaving.
When I cam home last night, I saw it was still not responding, and TM was still trying to backup. All other apps were functioning fine.
I tried to force quit Finder and TM, but it did not work. I then shut down the Mac manually, and rebooted.
The problem has now arisen, where the partitioned drives will not mount at all. The TM backup drive is fine, and I can browse TM fine with it - so good to know all my data is backed up.
I looked at the logs in console, and see the messages saying that the drive cannot mount as it is dirty?
What I have tried as troubleshooting steps:
•Disk Utility to try and mount the drives, but they are not showing up
•Connecting the drive to my Mac Mini - still nothing.
•DiskWarrior - nothing. Only my TM backup drive and Mac HD show up.
•Running FSCK from Terminal. I can see the drives in /dev, but keep getting "Bad Super block" errors. When I try looking for another Super Block, it says nothing found, and would I like to run it manually? The same happens when run in single user mode.
•Unplugging the Mac and the drives from the Mac, waiting 5 mins, resetting the NVRAM and PRAM (booting up holding CMDPR and waiting for the second chime, shutting down, plugging in and turing n drives, rebooting ... nothing!
It seems as though I have exhausted all possible options.
I now accept that the drive is unrecoverable, and am relieved that the TM backups are OK. I am thus happy to format the drive and repartition it, then restore everything from TM. Will be a fairly big job, but at least the data is backed up.
The only problem I have, is I cannot even mount the drives to format them!
Is there any safe way of doing this over the command line. Or even better, has anybody gt any other advice as to options I can try?
I hope I have been thorough enough in my explanation here.
Thanks in advance,
Dave

The only problem I have, is I cannot even mount the drives to format them!
I have a feeling that the partition map is bad. Does the drive itself report to DU? If the drive does show up, you can select that, and click the Repair Disk button under the First Aid tab. If that doesn't fix it, with the drive selected, click the partition tab and re-partition the drive. After that, I would erase the newly created volumes with 1-pass/zero out option selected and restore the data that was on the external from TM.
If none of this works or if the drive itself (not the volumes) doesn't show up in DU, you either have a bad drive or bad controller in the external case. How old is the Ultramax? Just wondering if it might still be under manufacturer's warranty. I would check to see if you are still eligible from the manufacturer's warranty and get the whole external unit replaced. If you are out of warranty, I think it likely that you need to replace that external with a new one. I've had a drive go bad in an external case (this one I could still mount but the heads would 'freeze') and the controller on another external go bad (this one, the drive would not report to DU so I took the drive out of the enclosure, stuck the drive in another case and there was no problem with the drive.)

External drives will not mount on 10.2.3

whatever working drive i use (and i've tested a few), my old iMac (OS 10.2.3) will not mount anything external.
the drives work as evidence by the fact that they mount on my other Macs.
and the USB ports work (confirmed by testing the keyboard in each one).
yes, the Finder view preferences are set to show external drives.
to complicate matters, Disk Utility shows only the hardrive.
the issue is with 10.2.3 and i have no idea what's up.

It was not until Mac OS X 10.6.4, not possible to run on a 10.2 machine, that ExFat was supported.
Many older Macs also will not recognize GUID formatted partitions made to boot Intel Macs either.
10.2.3 is the first system to support Apple Partition Map HFS Extended (Jornalled).
There may be NTFS support based on my tip here:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3003

External drive will not mount to desktop

Ok so i just bought a new hard drive and hooked everything up to my imac. However, it will not mount to my desktop.
1. I opened disc utility and i can see that my newly purchased hard drive is listed on the LHS with 931 GB available.
2. I click on the mount button on the top and i get this message- "The disk “disk1s1” could not be mounted. Try running First Aid on the disk and then retry mounting."
3. So now i click on First Aid and attempt to repair disc, however I get this message-"Disk Utility stopped repairing “disk1s1” because the following error was encountered: Filesystem verify or repair failed."
Does anyone have any idea how to fix this problem?
Thanks in advance.

how did that solve the issue? my 350gb seagate drive just started behaving the same way as your initial post -- it shows in Disk Utility but will not mount -- even after running disk repair/verify. This just started happening two days ago...

Partition of external drive will not mount

I have an external, 3rd party, 1TB HD connected to a MBPro via USB.
I partitioned this drive into 2 parts, one of which I have been using for TM backups. It worked for a month and then the mount of the TM partition started to fail. The partition I use for user space still mounts OK.
My last TM backup was 3 days ago. The TM partition started to fail to mount then. Disk Utility is unable to mount this partition.
Suggestions that do not require reformatting?
TM worked fine in this partictioned HD across USB for quite a while ... finished a backup and then went bad.
Thanks.

Great idea, Twittly.
I hooked the drive in question up to a 2nd mac and spent about an hour there w/Disk Utility running on the drive and/or the individual partitions.
Never saw a problem!!!!! But ... Diskutility did spend a huge amount of time in fsck_hfs (as shown by Activity Monitor) on the TM partition. that tells me that something is really wrong w/that parttion even though Disk Utility gave it a clean bill of health.
The partition still would not mount, even on the 2nd Mac, even using the Mount command from Disk Utility.
I am now resigned to takng Shootist's recommendation ... or maybe I'll just junk the drive & replace w/something else.
Thanks everyone!!

External drive will not mount

I have a 500Gb external USB / firewire HD, and it has stopped mounting.
Disk utility can see the disk, and can see nothing wrong with it if I try to repair. However, if I try to mount the disk from disk utility, it fails to mount the disk - although it gives no error message. The disk just doesn't mount. The disk drive spins, but then it stops and everything is as it was.
I have tried various free scripts and utilities from version tracker - all give similar results.
I have tried mounting the drive from the terminal using the following command
mount_hfs /dev/disk1s3 /Volumes/Jack
but it gives the result 'mount_hfs: Invalid argument'. I made sure /Volumes/Jack existed, and I tried mount_hfs with the -or argument. All no good.
I tried booting my old G3 iBook (OSX 10.3.9), and connecting the drive to that machine. Same result in the disk utility of that machine.
Any ideas? Or do I just go back to the vendor and demand a replacement (drive is about 6 months old)? I'd rather recover the data - the drive is a backup of all my DV tapes... so I have the data, but copying on to the drive again takes about 18 hours of running my video camera and iMovie
Thanks for any advice anyone can give.
Tony

Tony:
Tech Tool Pro will run a hardware check on the drive. However, it must see the drive and be able to mount it.
Also, if you have not already done so, you can try different cables in different ports. If none of these work, and roam's suggestion does not help, especially if the drive powers up, it is likely a failed firewire bridge. If that is the case you can remove the HDD and put it in a firewire enclosure like one of these. Wherever you get it you want to be sure to get one with the more reliable Oxford 911+ chipset.
Please do post back with update, and/or further questions or comments.
Cheers.
cornelius

External device will not mount

I have a USB 1.0 recording device that mounts without problem on my iBook, but not the iMac. This has not always been the case.
A few weeks ago, I shutdown the iMac forgetting the device was mounted. On the restart an error message appeared telling me the device was not properly unmounted. Since then, the iMac does not recognize the device when I connect the USB cord directly to the iMac. I suspect an alias of the previously unmounted disk is still in the system (probably a hidden file), however, I have not been able to find it.
What I have done so far: I have used WhatSize to reveal the hidden files. Another post about a similar mounting problem mentioned that /Volume/Folders might hold an alias, however, I was not able to locate it.
I started up the system in Safe Mode. No mounting.
I ran Disk Warrior on the drive - a few minor problems were resolved. On the restart, no mounting of the device.
As I said initially, I can mount the device on my iBook.
Appreciate any input. Thanks

To open /Volumes and see if there is anything there, just use the Finder's Go menu item, slide down to "Go to Folder" and type this:
/Volumes
Click the Go button and new window will open with aliases to all mounted drives. If you do not have the device plugged in there should not be anything there having to do the device. Also, the only things that should be there are aliases to your currently mounted drives. If there is anything else it should be removed.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

External HD will not Mount on desktop

I have a MBP and I have been working with an external Lacie HD and then yesterday when I go to hook it up it won't mount on my desktop. I checked my firewire connection in the system profiler and it is reading the drive. I just cannot see the icon on my desktop. I have to hooked up with a firewire 400 cable.
Any Suggestions? Thanks.

I don't see it in the finder and I went into the preferences and the external HD was checked. I also ran a verify disk and disk repair o it and it came up with an error message that my keys were out of order.

EXTERNAL DRIVE IS NOT MOUNTING--help!!

Hello Everyone--
I hope you can help. I go a frantic message from a friend of mine who is a DJ and on a cruise ship spinning...
Here's his dillemma:
I just tried transferring some mp3s from a 2 terrabyte Western Digital hard drive and it was DOS formatted so that it would read a bunch of files from a third hard drive but when I was trying to copy files over to my LaCie terrabyte HD that was just replaced It froze up and then My LaCie would not mount after restarting . It does show up in utilites with the bottom part shaded out in gray. I try to repair the disc and get this message:
Verifying volume â€œLaCie Diskâ€
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Incorrect block count for file .journalHistoryLog
(It should be 9 instead of 11)
Invalid node structure
The volume LaCie Disk needs to be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated. Have a nice day!
Message was edited by: Angelo J. Guglielmo, Jr.
Message was edited by: Angelo J. Guglielmo, Jr.

"Invalid node structure" is a serious directory error.
Try Disk Warrior to rebuild your directory but I don't know if it could mount the volume.
Your other option, since the disk shows but the volume does not is to choose it, erase disk and format either Mac OS Extended (Journeled) or, MS-DOS to be readable on both Mac and PC.
-mj
[email protected]

IBook is about to die, external HD will not mount!!! help!!

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