In disk utility, it shows that my external hard drive is somehow unmounted and I can't access it in finder or repair it in Disk Utility. How can I get this working without losing my important data?

In disk utility, it shows that my external hard drive is somehow unmounted and I can't access it in finder or repair it in Disk Utility. How can I get this working without losing my important data?
Thank you!

When you erased the disk did you select Mac OS Extended Journaled as the format option?

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    My macbook pro's memory is full and I purchased an external hard drive. I am using timemachine, but need to earse/free up some memory on my laptop. How do I do this?

    Christinag1317 wrote:
    My macbook pro's memory is full and I purchased an external hard drive. I am using timemachine, but need to earse/free up some memory on my laptop. How do I do this?
    Ok when you refer to "memory" that is the Random Access Memory which is temporary memory the processor (worker) uses to store stuff while it's using it. Power goes off whats in the memory is gone.
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    For instance the best choice would be to move some movies out of your Movies folder to another MoviesExtra folder on the ExtraStorage#1 drive.
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    The other things like Documents are quite small, Pictures can take a lot of space if you have a lot, but if you need them on the internal drive then that's better. Music one tends to use a lot or manage playlists and such, but perhaps some music you may which to move off or "prune", I suggest always burning data DVD's of music especially for extra backups.
    Once you have freed some room on the internal drive, this liitle neat program will show you what is taking the largest amount of space on your internal drive.
    http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/
    After a scan, right click on the big squares to "revel in Finder" to show you what's taking the largest amount of space, be warned it also opens up hidden system files and folders, which you won't be able to move. So concentrate on what's inthe Users folder.
    Likely if you have a lot of Movies this is the biggest culprit on most standard internal hard drives. Also if you have something in iTunes that's auto-downloading something like PodCasts and not deleting the older ones and you forget. So go there and fix things and that can free up drive space.
    If you bought a small SSD with your new Mac, then the price of that SSD has come back to haunt you with low storage space, you will have to think carefully what you can live without on the internal drive.
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    http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html

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                iPad,iPod,iPod Touch Recovery Mode
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    My external hard drive will not open and only shows up in Disk Utilities. When I try yo repair it, it give me and error of invalid sibling link. How do I fix my external hard drive?

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  • External hard drive won't unmount for disk utility.

    Im not sure if this is the right topic area but I have a white macbook and my external hard drive won't unmount. I want to erase it via disk utility but it keeps telling me other programs are using it.

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  • Why have my TV shows on my external hard drive disappeared when I've deleted them from my iTunes library?

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    Hello Janeburows,
    You might have setup your iTunes in such a way that you store your Media files on your External Hard Drive and if that is the situation then whenever you delete anything permanently from your iTunes on your Computer when the External Drive is connected then the Content will get deleted from your External Hard Drive. To verify the Location for the Media files which you have on iTunes do the following.
    Open iTunes > Preferences> Advanced and you will see it under iTunes Media Folder Location
    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391

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    abailey46 wrote:
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  • Just got Prosoft drive genius 3 software, and it's telling me that the external hard drive that i am using for my time machine back up drive needs to be defragmented.  is it wise to do this or should i not??

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    1.5TB for backing up 500GB, while WD Green 3TB is $140 and WD Black 1.5TB is, about the same price.
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    https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/mac_os_x_v10.6_snow_leopard?view= discussions#/?tagSet=1009
    where there are some good FAQ and tutorials, and people that know the ins-and-outs and shortcomings.

  • I have all my movies on an external hard drive.  I want to be able to access them without copying everything to my iTunes.  How can I do this?

    I have all my movies on an external hard drive.  I want to be able to access them without copying everything to my iTunes.  How can I do this?

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  • My WD 2tb external hard drive will not unmount from my MacBook Pro.

    My WD 2tb external hard drive will not unmount from my MacBook Pro. It no longer even shows up in finder, however it does show up in Disk Utility. I have tired so many of the suggestions on the internet all to a fail.
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    I have been about four days now with this issue all over the internet, in this community, and watching videos on everything and nothing about this topic to a fail.
    I think I am doomed and have lossed this external drive because of some wierd application that will NEVER close on my hard drive for it to disconnect correctly. It's annoying.
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    Have you trie using another USB port? Can you test the USB ports with other USB devices to assure they are working? You may want to reinstall OS X in case there has been a driver glitch.
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    Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
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    2. Reinstall Snow Leopard
    If the drive is OK then quit DU and return to the installer.  Proceed with reinstalling OS X.  Note that the Snow Leopard installer will not erase your drive or disturb your files.  After installing a fresh copy of OS X the installer will move your Home folder, third-party applications, support items, and network preferences into the newly installed system.
    Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.

  • One Format External Hard Drive for Your Mac and PC...

    I have Formatted my External HD Passport 500GB = (465.8) and split it in two partition Mac OS Extended (Journal = 232GB) and FAT32 (Ms-Dos-FAT = 232GB) and reformat to NTFS using Windows...
    How to use one External HUD for your Mac and PC you have a PC and how to have two Partition in Mac OS Extended (Journal) and FAT (Ms-Dos-FAT)as you desire the size of your partition under application, Utilities and Disk Utility and covert the (FAT32) to (NTFS)using Windows Control Panel or just search by Start, search Computer Management or just right my Computer and format the second partition to (NTFS)
    Tips for Mac OS Extended (Journaled) FAT32 vs NTFS, what works and don't work...
    (1)Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Partition can't be use in Windows to transfer files but NTFS Partition can be use in Mac by transferring file from Windows to Mac and NTFS support for files over 4G in size...
    (2)FAT32 can be use in Mac and Windows but with a limitation that a file cannot be transferred to a FAT32 partition if the file is larger than 4GB such as a video file and FAT32 file system performs more slowly than NTFS...
    (2)Mac OS Extended (Journaled) can be use in Windows when you Reformat your HD to HFS+ by third-party app such as http://www.macdrive.com/ MacDrive for $50.or http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/ NTFS For Mac 6.0 for $30...
    Reference link 1 External Hard Drive for Your Mac and PC...
    http://www.myfirstmac.com/index.php/mac/articles/1-external-hard-drive-for-your- mac-and-pc
    Best regards...
    JamesUFOs...
    http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesEBEs

    I have many external drives I use between my MacBook Pro and my Windows PC's. I use a free NTFS driver for Mac OS-X to give me full read/write access to any NTFS formatted partitions when running Mac OS. I also use MediaFour's MacDrive v8 on some of my Windows PC's to access any HFS+ formatted partitions.
    Most of my drives are formatted NTFS because I have more Windows machines than I have MacDrive licenses, and with the driver for Mac OS, they are fully accessible. I have a few drives I do keep formatted as HFS+ because I have encountered an app or two that don't work quite right when they don't get to write to files on an HFS+ partition (one of my backup programs is picky about this).
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  • External hard drive becomes "read only" and won't let Time Machine back up

    I have an external hard drive for back up, and it has been working fine until recently.
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  • External Hard Drive problems with iTunes and iPod

    I recently purchased a 320 gig external hard drive for my computer, hoping in part to load my iTunes library onto it. Obviously I'd have much more room on disc than my actual iPod, so I was going to manually manage my music (an option I didn't have selected on my iPod before).
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    Yeah, I gave the new drive the letter Z, so there shouldn't have been any conflicts there. I also tried your other suggestion, and while the computer recognized my external hard drive, it didn't seem to make any difference once I plugged in the iPod again.
    I've been wrestling with this for days now. I've tried changing the drive letters for both the external hard drive and my iPod several times (but no matter what, the iPod always seems to take F when it's unplugged and then plugged back in). I've tried restoring the iPod on multiple occasions. I've tried reinstalling all my USB drivers. I've consolidated my music library on several occasions (I now have two identical libraries on my external hard drive), yet annoyingly, iTunes seems to keep switching file paths away from the external hard drive and back to their original locations on the C drive. I'm trying to free up internal hard drive space, not house 30 gigs of media on it. That's what this new external hard drive is for.
    Somehow, I was able to get them both to be recognized at the same time, but it never lasts long. I'll start iTunes with the external hard drive disconnected, plug in my iPod, wait for the iPod screen to come up in iTunes, then plug my external hard drive back in. Then, I can miraculously start to transfer music back onto my iPod, but iTunes doesn't seem to want this to happen for some reason, and will usually cut off the transfer. So far I've managed to put three whole songs on my iPod.
    So now I'm trying to do two things. One, the same as before, get my computer and iTunes to recognize both my iPod and my external hard dive at the same time. And two, get iTunes to stop changing the file paths back to the C drive. These files are already on my external hard drive and don't need to change.
    (As a side note, I should comment on how helpful people are on this discussion board. The Apple representitives I called on several occasions seemed totally unwilling to help, acting more like pushy salesmen than anything, while people here seem to be much more friendly and knowledgeable. Just thought it needed to be said.)
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