Internal drive disappeared. Shows up as "Media" & 0 bytes

I recently installed a 120GB SSD drive instead of my 640GB rotational hard disk drive. I then removed my optical drive, and put the 640GB drive in its place using an internal adaptor that fits into that space. I installed OS X on the 120GB drive. Everything worked fine for a few days and all my data was intact in the older 640GB drive. I was able to copy files from it and copy files out of it without any problems.
I was copying some files over from the 640GB drive to the new SSD drive when things started to slow down. So I restared my laptop and I got an error message which said "Your disk is not initialized" When I click on Initialize it shows me disk utiility where my older 640GB drive shows up as "Media" with no partitions or data on it and a total capacity of 0 bytes.
I am unable to erase, partition or anything else on this drive. In system information I see that the Macbook pro is aware that a drive is attached to the SATA interface and also that it's rotational media. But I am unable to use the drive or access any of my data.
Anyone know what I can do? Did my HDD crash?
Attached screenshots of Disk Utility and Sytem Information

Yes, even tried it on a PC, couldn't be identified. Bought a Seagate Baraccuda, and it was up and running in no time, super quiet (the other one was grinding badly). So it was the drive after all...
DirectCanada.com are charging me 15% restocking fee. I should have read their small print before buying from them! Got the Seagate at Best Buy, easier to deal with someone face to face. Internet companies aren't always a good deal in the end.

Similar Messages

Internal Drives Disappeared- Help

G4/1.0 DP MDD with four drives filling the internal bays. The two in the upper bay, one with the OS, show up fine. The two in the lower bay, under the DVD drive, which were showing up fine after installing 10.4.7 about ten days ago have suddenly disappeared. They don't show up under disk utility or System Profiler either. Booting with Disk Warrior, one of the drives appears on the list and DW says it is shown on the desktop, but it's not. Repaired the directory, but still nothing. Finder prefs are to show all drives.
I repaired permissions many times, zapped Pram, replaced battery, disconected the drives, checked the jumpers and reseated the connections and all seems fine. About three times over the last year, using 10.3.8 - 10.4.4 - 10.4.7, these drives disappeared temporarily, but returned upon a restart. Now they seem to be gone for good, but there must be something else I can do to try and get these drives to show up/mount on the desktop. Any ideas?? My next step is to remove the drives and put them in cases to check them, but I have a feeling that the drives are OK and there's something else going on here. I think the bus that these drives are attached to are slower than the main bus, but I only use these drives for backup and fortunately most of the info is old and not important. Still, I'd like to solve this puzzle. BTW all other types of external drives, Firewire, SCSI, USB are all working fine and I disconnected everything peripheral from the CPU to troubleshoot.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
MacScott
G4/1.0 DP MDD Mac OS X (10.4.7)

I had the exact same issue and did nearly all of what
you did, which are the typical troubleshooting
procedures.
This worked for me: replace the PATA cable with a
fresh one that is NOT a cable select IDE cable. The
cable select IDE has a little sliver cut from a
segment of the ribbon that makes the driver CS no
matter what the jumper setting.
I have no idea why this worked but it did. I have
not had a problem since.
Thanks, but I'm a little confused. So a new cable for each drive or are there doubles? Is this a universal cable Mac/pc? Maybe the cable that came with the drive (that I probably threw away)? Do you know the link of a supplier? Would any Apple store have these??
Knowing why this worked would relieve a little anxiety. Do these cables go bad just sitting in the cpu?
Anyway I googled PATA and I'm still not sure if I'd know the difference between a cable select and a non CS. I'll continue my research.
Thanks again!
Hmmm, swapping the drives. Maybe I'll try this before I swap the cables.
Thanks,
G4/1.0 DP MDD Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Mac G5's 2nd Internal Drive disappears

Hi,
I have a G5 with 2 internal drives,
one is called STARTUP and has apps, etc.
The 2nd is/was called MEDIA and had lots of documents
and for some reason has disappeared from my desktop
I did a restart and used Disk Utility but I am not finding it
Any suggestions please?...thank you

Hi Evan Kreeger1-
If DU doesn't see it that is usually not a good thing.
Before panicking you might want to open the Mac up and check all of the connections to the drive.
Luck-
-DaddyPaycheck

Im attempting to start up from OSX 10.4.9 back up disc on my Macbook 13inch but it starts up and am able get to utilities then disk utility but my internal drive doesnt show in options on left can anyone help ?

Hi all my trusty macbook 13 inch 5 years old has let me down get a box with question mark in it when i switch on , so apple support tells me to try ans start by back up OSX 10.4.9 disk the built in drive doesnt work so i am using an external toshiba drive .
I switch on holding down c key an apple logo comes on and it starts up im able to acess utilities then disk utility but in the options on the left there is only the Backup disc and the external drive showing my internal mackintosh drive wont show so i cant move further any help

If your hard drive isn’t recognized in Disk Utility then your hard drive is probably dead.

Internal drive disappeared !

Help! my drive evacuated !
My external turned Internal 160 WD drive seems to have disappeared from the desktop. Although it shows up in the Utilities window, when I try to run repair disk, it prompts me that the drive cannot be found.
What happened to my drive ??? Anybody... ??
G4 Mac OS X (10.3.1)
G4 Mac OS X (10.3.1)

Hi Rachna:
Some older G4s do have a limitation on how large a drive they recognize (I think the limit is 128GB), and generally the response to this is to partition the drive into chunks smaller than this, which is something Disk Utility should be able to handle.
If it were to happen again, the first thing I'd try is to unplug the cables from the drive, then reconnect them (turn the computer off first, of course, but you can leave it plugged in so that the hardware is properly grounded). If that doesn't work, then Disk Warrior often will see a drive whose directory has become too corrupted for it to mount under OS X.
Andrew

Internal drive disappeared and no longer recognized???

A second internal HD that was installed new in my machine - now in use for over 2 years --has disappeared from the desktop. It doesnt appear in either system profiler or disk utility. I even tried to change it into another bay and still not showing up. It has alot of data on it, I would certainly like to retrieve (I do have some backups but not complete). Best steps to take?

sorry must make connection the computer this problem has occured on is mac pro 2.8 ghz quad core intel xenon

Internal Drives Disappear & Boot Problems

I have a Quad Core, I had 4 drives in it. All 500 Gig Maxtor Drives.
Anytime the computer would lock up and be force reset stuff would act funny on one of the drives, it finally failed mechanically.
Shortly after another drive had errors that couldn't be resolved and the drive had to be reformatted, it was being used as a time machine drive.
I received a replacement drive from Maxtor and it wouldn't function in the machine. After dozens of tries I got it to work so I could initialize it.
I am not able to put 3 drives in the machine.
Anytime I do I just get a white screen - no apple, no circle loading pattern.
When I get the white screen the only key-sequence that's accepted is the PRAM Zap COMMAND/OPTION/P/R. No other key sequence is able to be used....no safe boot, so single user, no option boot, etc.
All of the drives work fine when connected to any computer using a USB cable/power adapter that's distributed by Other World Computing.
At this time I can only use 2 drives inside the machine at one time.
Are there any tests or diagnostics I can run to learn if there is any kind of ATA controller board or logic board?
Please share any similar problems or learned solutions.

Apple Hardware Test
TechTool Deluxe or Pro
Disk Warrior
Intech Speedtools
SuperDuper
Onyx or Leopard Cache Cleaner
are some of the tools I use to maintain system and drives.
I have had 4 x MaxLine Pro 500GB units from OWC
I would pick up 4 x WD Caviar 640 $80 from OWC at this point.
Are you sure that you are repairing and dealing with directory corruption and corrupt files and journal when this happens? ie, not boot from the drive but from a backup or emergency?
Did you ever use Partition to setup new single partition and do a zero-all or test for bad sectors?
Reset SMC?
Sounds more like it could be logicboard but only AHT and AppleCare can fully determine that.
A force restart is sure to damage the directory, volume information block, cache folders, and journaling.
The reason I replaced the MaxLines is they tend to run warmer, never below 40º even with SmcFanControl while WD drives, even Raptors are always in 28º winter and 35º summer.

External Hard Drives not showing up in Premiere Pro Media Browser

Hello All! My external drive(s) aren't showing up in Premiere Pro... and yes, they were working just fine yesterday. The internal drives both show up, but the external drive(s) aren't accessible.
At first I thought that perhaps it was the drive (a new USB 3.0 that worked yesterday)... I tried changing the cable, changing the drive, even changing from a USB 3.0 drive to a FW 800 drive. All show up on my desktop, as well as in other applications (including After Effects, and "other" editing platforms) etc... but none are showing up in Premiere Pro.
FWIW, I tried in both Premiere Pro CC as well as Premiere Pro CS6. I have tried rebooting the computer, creating new projects, holding down the option key while starting Premiere, using Digital Rebellion's CS Repair... all to no avail. Any thoughts?
My system is a MacBook Pro (late 2011), 2.4 GHz Intel Core i7 with 16 GB Ram, running Mac OS X 10.8.5
Thanks in advance for any assistance.
-- Sue

Hi Sue_Lawson,
Welcome to Adobe Forums.
Please try to enable a root user by following the below link
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1528
Try to check in Premiere Pro CC as well as CS6 whether your external hard drive is recognized or not.
Thanks

Ext hd drive and 1 int hd drive disappeared from desktop

so i fire up the old mac and i notice that both my external hard drive (used for time machine) and internal hard drive 1 have both disappeared; i went into disk utility and found the internal drive; it showed as not mounted so i mounted it; BINGO, there it is..... but, no ext drive in disk utility, so i hooked it up to my other mac and there it is in all its glory; i'm not sure what to do next;

Finder->Preferences->Sidebar->Devices->select Hard Disks and External Disks, for starters. Then, OPTION-click and hold on the Finder's Dock icon and select Relaunch.

Merge external + internal drive

Hi,
All my iTunes files are on an external drive. Since installing iTunes 9, the default location has been reset to my local (empty) Music folder without me noticing. Since then, all files I added or downloaded (about 20Gb) are placed on my internal drive in a new iTunes Media folder.
iTunes itself seems to have no difficulty in using both locations.
But I want to move these new files to my external drive again. I can add them again to iTunes, but then I'll probably wind up with doubles, no? I want to merge the files of my 2 iTunes Media folders and tell iTunes it's all in one location again.
Any suggestions?

+Okay - so the key is not to drag the other library onto the hard disk but just to add the library so that iTunes is "aware" of the library on the external. Then I can "consolidate."+
no. you don't add the library, you add the media files.
you can either drag the folder with the media (songs, movies, tv shows) from the external into the iTunes window on your new Mac, or you use the +add file+ from the +file menu+ in iTunes
actually, in your situation you don't need to consolidate at all. given enough HD space on your new Mac, adding the media from the external HD will do the job.
as for consolidating: lets assume you have 2 external 500 GB drives. one holds all your movies, the other all your songs. your iTunes is aware that movies are located on drive (a) and songs on drive (b).
lets say you are sick of having 2 drives and go buy a new 2 TB drive. here's when you point iTunes to the new 2 TB drive and ask it to consolidate the media from the 2 500 GB drives to the new 2 TB drive.

Certain drives missing from KDE's "media:/" HAL Issue?

All my drives / partitions show up in media:/ except my software raid array (/dev/md0) and my SCSI CDROM (/dev/scd0)
Any Ideas as to why?
'lshal | grep hda' etc. show up fine, but 'lshal | grep md0' and 'lshal | grep sr0' draw a blank.
Cheers,
Steve.

JokerBoy wrote:
meop, try adding yourself to power group
# gpasswd -a meop power
meop wrote:My user should be part of the necessary groups to shutdown/restart (not sure what steps kde goes through performing its shutdown from the menu): .. wheel optical storage power ..

Internal Hard Drives Disappeared, Finder Memory Problem

Hello Helpful Folks,
I recently installed an addional internal Hard Drive, and an additional 1GB SDRAM. This worked great for a day, but the next morning, after powering up, system was extremely sluggish, and after much deadline-induced impatient problem solving, has gone from bad to worse (system refuses to acknowledge existence of internal Hard Drives). I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but as
the devil is in the details, I figure too much info is better than not enough.
Following is a breakdown of my system: AS IT LAST WORKED; RECENT UPGRADES; and MY LAME ATTEMPTS AT PROBLEM SOLVING THAT HAVE MADE THINGS WORSE. Please don't interpret my all caps as shouting, just trying to organize this post for better clarity.
System is dedicated to Video Editing with FCP 3, running under OS 9.2.2. System is "off the Grid", i.e. no network, no internet, no printer, no gaming devices. System was purchased new in July 2001, by a friend. At one point I know this system had an Airport card, which was removed prior to my purchase in 2003. I can't remember what else it may have had installed in its history, but here's what it has now:
SYSTEM AS IT LAST WORKED:
**bold items are upgrades Original Owner or I installed with no apparent problems**
Power Mac G4 "Quicksilver" 2001
867 PowerPC G4, 256 L2, 2MB L3
-1 Stick "ValueRAM - KVR 133 x 64 C3/512" in PC 133 DIMM slot **
- "Virtual Memory" was turned off years ago due to conflict with FCP 3
-2 empty DIMM slots
-1 60 GB internal HD (Maxtor Ultra ATA/100), 1 partition, formatted HFS+, jumpered as "Master" on Internal ATA 2 ID=0 (which as I understand it is ATA/66 speed)
-1 Pioneer "Superdrive" DVD-R/W/CD-R/W on Internal ATA 0 ID=0
-NVIDIA GeForce2 MX with 32MB SDRAM in AGP Slot, feeding a 17" Apple Studio Display.
-PCI Display Card "formacGA7" - not attached to any external device, not sure what its intended purpose is.**
-3 Empty PCI Slots
-OEM Keyboard attached to Monitor's rear USB port.
-Microsoft 3 Button Wheel mouse with "IntelliEye" (wheel is 3rd Button) connected to Keyboard USB port (right side).**
-2 OEM FireWire (400) ports
-2 OEM USB (1) ports
Peripherals that have worked in various configurations with this system over the past 3 years:
-3 OWC Mercury Elite ("Oxford Chipset") Externally powered, External FireWire(400) 200GB Hard Drives, 1 partition each, formatted HFS+, daisy-chained to either of the FireWire ports.
-1 Canon GL1 MiniDV camera, attached either to the other FireWire port, or to the last drive in the chain, depending on my urgency/laziness factor. BTW, FCP 3 has worked flawlessly controlling this Cam for logging and Batch Capturing.
Applications on System Hard Drive that I have OEM CDs for:
-OS 9.2 - (I think I remember that OS X was removed from system due to conflicts shortly after original purchase)
-FCP 3
-DiskWarrior (version unknown, purchased from Alsoft in 2003)
-OWC Intech Hard Disk SpeedTools ver 3.5
Other CDs I have:
OEM CDs for Power Mac G4:
-Software Install, OS 9.2, CD vers 1
-Software Install, OS 10.0.4, CD vers 1
-Software Restore, OS 9.2 & 10.0.4 CDs vers 1, Discs 1-4 of 4.
-OEM Apple Hardware Test; Power Mac G4, SW vers 1.2.1
Applications on system Hard Drive that I don't have CDs for, that I rarely use, but I'd like to keep:
-After Effects 5.0
-QuickTime Player 6.0.2
-Toast Audio Extractor 1.1
-Toast Titanium 5.0.2
Applications on system Hard Drive I use if my wife is busy on our Windows XP machine:
-Photshop 6.0
-Microsoft Word & Excel
# of other Applications on System Hard Drive I either don't use or may be integral to the system: 260
# of Control Panels:
-Enabled: 34
-Disabled: 0
# of Extensions:
-Enabled: 174
-Disabled: 0
note: a number of the applications and extensions are for AOL, Quickbooks, Microsoft Money and the like, as well as other things I don't use (Airport, USB printers, Networking, etc.)
Smart things I did:
-Regularly made backup copies of my FCP projects to the external drives.
-Bought a copy of MacDrive so I can see what's on my External Drives on the XP machine.
-Printed out System Profile before I installed upgrades.
-Thoroughly searched this discussion board for and gathered as much info as I could before upgrading.
Dumb things I did:
-Made a copy, but not a clone, of my System Folder to one of the external drives when I first got it.
-Didn't keep any sort of separate log of what's on the External Drives.
-Never ran any sort of Disk Maintenance, even after one of the Externals crashed (DiskWarrior saved my butt on that).
-Ignored some of the advice on this discussion board.
Really dumb thing I did without even realizing it:
Captured all media for a rush job onto my internal system Hard Drive, as well as storing and using massive jpgs for the same job on that same drive...
Which led to painfully slow rendering times, and crashes caused by "Error: Out of Memory", which I interpreted as "Must buy more memory" and not "must make sure I'm not trying to edit media stored on system drive, especially with massive jpgs that I should reduce"
RECENT UPGRADES:
Here's what I did, and how I did it:
Turned off system, disconnected all External FireWire Devices, disconnected Monitor, opened case, touched various metal parts of case and power supply to discharge any Static, unplugged power cable.
-Installed 2 512MB sticks of "Lifetime" PC 133 SDRAM; total System RAM is now 1.5GB, all 3 DIMM slots now occupied.
-Installed 1 Maxtor "DiamondMax" Ultra ATA/133 100GB Hard Drive (8 MB buffer) as "Slave" (no jumper) in top of U-Carrier above System Hard Drive; attached to middle of original Apple ribbon cable, attached available power plug.
Taped spare jumper to inside of empty drive bay, noting origin and date. Did NOT push PMU button. Carefully closed case. Reconnected Monitor, did NOT reconnect any FireWire devices. Powered System on, but did NOT perform PRAM reset.
I don't remember the exact order of what happened next, but I think: System booted up normally, a window popped up saying a new drive had been found, would I like to intitialize it?, which I did as Mac OS extended, and then named. If I was instructed to restart, I did so, otherwise did not. Clicked on "about this Mac" and saw that it now showed 1.5GB RAM. I then went about moving Media/Render files off the System drive (and one of the Externals) onto the Internal Drive, with a combination of FCP's Media Manager, and dragging from the Finder. After files had copied, dragged Media/Render files from System Drive to Trash. Opened FCP project, had FCP re-link to new locations of missing files. Saved, closed, and re-opened project, set Capture/Scratch disc to new internal Drive. At some point I changed FCP's Memory Allocation from whatever it was to 512000KB Minimum, and 900000KB Prefered (and I hope I got all those zeroes right). Did NOT restart after changing Memory Allocation, unless a window popped up instructing me to do so, in which case I did. Re-opened my project, rendered a few thing at a noticeably increased speed, saved everything, emptied the Trash, shut everything down, and called it a night as it was 4:30 am.
A few hours later, I plugged the MiniDV and an External Drive into the FW ports and powered up the System. It was behaving extremely sluggishly. I would click on something, the pointer would turn into a wristwatch (sometimes with the minute-hand moving, sometimes not) and like an actual minute later, what I'd clicked on would open. All three drives were on the desktop, still had their files, and "About this Mac" still showed 1.5GB total Memory. So I powered down, disconnected the FW devices, waited a bit, and powered back up. Same sluggish response. I tried to open my FCP project file, and instead got a Window that said something to the effect of "The Application associated with this document could not be found". I think I tried to open FCP from the Applications folder on the System Drive and got the same message (I'd only had 3 hours sleep, no coffee, my client had died, and his family was coming for whatever I had in a few hours).
LAME ATTEMPTS AT PROBLEM SOLVING THAT HAVE MADE THINGS WORSE
Panic had set in, which never solves anything, so I don't remember what order I performed which tasks, between searching for clues in this forum, and convincing myself that that would be faster than trying to compose a question, waiting for a response, etc.
The first two things I did, and I can't remember which I did first (both from Keyboard Commands during Restart):
Rebuild Desktop
PRAM Reset
Neither of those solved the problem, so I continued.
I tried restarting without extensions.
I would get errors that said something like "Not Enough Memory to Open Finder".
I tried booting from Disc 1 of the Software Restore Disk, which only wanted to destroy my data.
I tried booting from the OS 10 disk, with the same result.
I was finally able to boot from the OS 9.2 Software Install Disk, and actually saw both internal drives on the desktop, and the 1.5GB RAM in About this Mac. I tried to allocate more memory to Finder, but was informed that "Cannot Perform Requested Operation. This operation requires versions above 8.0".
I think at this point I decided that I must have too many extensions, and started disabling ones I thought irrelevent to my cause (mostly anything that said "AOL", "Airport", "Ethernet", "Printer", "Modem", "Speakable", and a couple things called "Open TPT".
It gets worse. Then I decided to turn off some "unnecessary" things via the control panels, but somehow managed to disable the control panels themselves: AppleTalk, DialAssist, File Sharing, Modem, Mouse (as I saw that Microsoft Mouse was among the others), Remote Access, Speech, USB Printer Sharing, and possibly TCP/IP.
That certainly didn't help anything (though upon restarting from the OS 9.2 Disc I was able to see the extensions and control panels in their respective "Disabled" folders in the System Folder). But I still wasn't able to get more Memory to Finder.
So, I decided a few more PRAM resets might help, which succeeded in making both Internal Hard Drives disappear. I tried booting up from the DiskWarrior disc, but even the Mighty DiskWarrior couldn't find the drives. I performed the longer, in depth version of the Apple Hardware Tools tests, which reported that everything's fine (including the new RAM), but made no mention of the Hard Drives at all. The deadline having long passed, I shut the system down. I read through more posts and tech articles, etc.
I searched my External drives with MacDrive on my XP, and found the drive that has the copy of my System Folder (which shows all extensions and control panels as enabled); not sure if the Quicksilver will boot from that, I don't know what the Keyboard command for booting from a FireWire drive is (if there is one) and the drive itself only has 900MB of free space.
I can't find any reference to Internal ATA drives anywhere in the MacDrive documentation; if it was possible I'd put them into the XP, get the files off the Mac drives, reformat them and install OS9 from the Discs.
This is where I am now:
The Quick Silver is still powered down. I removed the Microsft mouse and replaced it with the OEM Apple mouse. I opened the case, and removed the PRAM/Backup battery (manufacture date: July 2001). Couldn't find my voltmeter, so took the bat to Radio Shack and bought a new one. Had the Radio Shack guy test the old one: it showed 3.69 volts still. Have not installed the new battery yet. The case is still open, waiting for any advice any of you might have to offer.
Thank you all so much for your patience in perusing and pursuing this.
Sincerely,
Patterson
Power Mac G4 Quicksilver 867 Mac OS 9.2.x 17" Studio Display, 512MB RAM

Thank you Rodney and John,
The jumpers are correct for both Maxtor Drives.
Rodney, you are correct in that the initial problem (slow rendering/"out of Memory" crashes) was caused by my not realizing I'd stupidly captured several GBs of media to my system drive, and not checking which drives those files were on (as I'd assumed I'd put them on one of my external media drives) once that problem presented itself.
Before I'd determined what I'd done, I bought the extra RAM. After I'd found the media files on the System Drive, and saw that my dedicated media drives were too full to easily move them, I decided to buy an additional Internal drive so that I could:
-Move the Media onto it relatively quickly and finish my urgent project.
-Juggle all my media into a more organized fashion for archiving (as most of my projects are on-going long-term affairs)
-Wipe it, Partition it, and clone my System Drive onto it, as a spare bootable drive in case my OEM System Drive failed.
Copying the Media files onto the New Drive and moving the System Drive's Media files into the Trash worked great: huge improvement in Rendering, etc.
Before shutting down for the night I Emptied the Trash, and was pleased with the amount of space I'd freed up on the System Drive.
My guess is that the System Drive was terribly fragmented, having been subjected to intense use over the past 5 years without any sort of Drive Maintainence, and deleting that massive amount from it in one shot caused my extreme system sluggishness upon Startup the next day.
My subsequent lame attempts to solve the sluggishnes ultimately resulted in my losing access to both drives.
Today, I replaced the Backup Battery, pushed the PMU, re-attached the AC, and Powered Up with the case open as per your suggestion.
It was trying for a few minutes (the gray screen went black at one point, and then returned to gray) before presenting me with the flashing question mark.
There was, however, a quiet but distinct "buzzing" sound that would alternate: 1 sec "buzz", one second silence, one second "buzz", one second silence, etc. coming from the drives, even after the "?" appeared.
I powered down, removed the Ribbon and Power Cables from the new "Slave" drive, and powered up again, with the exact same results.
I powered down, removed the Ribbon and Power cables from the original "Master" drive, reinstalled the Jumper on the New Drive as "Master", plugged the End of the Ribbon and the Power cables into the New "Master" drive and powered up. The screen went to the "?" within 20 seconds instead of 4+ minutes, and no more "buzzing".
I put the Apple Hardware Tools Disk in, ran the "long" test, and everything came out fine.
I have to abandon this for now, but thanks again for your previous advice, and any more you may have!
Cheers,
Patterson

My second internal hard drive disappeared

My second internal hard drive disappeared a couple of days ago taking many gigs of iTunes with it. It does not appear on the desktop, finder or anywhere else. When I click on a song in iTunes I get "The song “Cowell: Set Of Five - 4” could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" When I try "locate," well it shows me the Main Disk. Not helpful. I've read lots of posts about vanishing drives and crashing drives on Leopard (I run Snow and was about to go to Lion). Did my drive die or did it go into the witness protection program? Irony is that I bought a 2 TB external drive last week to back up the iTunes drive and procrastinated. Suggestions? Experiences?
JCEspinosa

Is it listed in Disk Utility?

Internal Hard Drive disappeared

I've been using a 2TB external HD for the last 6 weeks or so as my main startup drive. When I set it up, I wiped the internal drive, reformatted it with Snow Leopard, and partitioned a Boot Camp Windows partition. I'm backing up using a 500GB backup which for now is covering me just fine. All of my drives were accessible and worked fine.
But after the last big OS X update, neither my internal drive nor my Windows drive are showing up on my desktop. I thought it might just need to be repaired so I opened Disk Utility to erase and repair the drive and reset it all up. The icon for the internal disk shows up, but it's called Media, and I've never titled that disk setup as that.
The info at the bottom of that window is as follows:
*Disk Description:* Media
*Connection Type:* SATA
*Connection Type:* Internal
*Total Capacity:* 0 Bytes
*Write Status:* Read/Write
*S.M.A.R.T Status:* Not Supported
*Partition Map Scheme:* Unformatted
Under First Aid, all of the buttons are grayed out. No Verify Disk or Repair Disk. Under Erase, none of the buttons are available. Under Partition, it won't allow me to rename the disk, and the buttons are gray. I've tried using Disk Utility from both the startup drive Apps/Utilities folder and also from starting up using the System Install CD, and the options are the same, nonexistent.
I've been using Macs for 25 years and am not new to fixing problems, but this is a first for me. It took me a long time to trust starting up from an external drive, but the 2TB lure was just too much. However, I need to know that if something happens, I still have my internal drive to fall back on. And right now, I'm freaking out a little (on the inside). Help!!

Same issue. Latest OSX: 10.8.3
Connection using firewire 800 to external sata 2tb drive (using thunderbolt dongle) - the drive suddenly appears unformatted. I connect my drive which i've been using for weeks - suddenly this: "the disc you inserted was not readable by this computer - Initilize/Ignore/Eject"
Of course I choose 'ignore'. It's happened to me 3 times now. 2 times on my brand new imac (Processor 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7) and 1 time on the same spec iMac I have at the office which was actually a 4tb sata drive.
This is the 3rd drive which is now also completely in accessable to to me. When I run any form of disc recovery, the content is there - but the MAC OS believes it's a fresh drive and will not mount it! It shows in disc utility as a blank unformatted drive.
What is going on??? I can't keep loosing my data. How can a drive suddenly loose all it's intergral data/why is this happening?I am scared to connect any of my other back up sata drives should the mac os be corrupting them in some way. This is critical.
Apple please sort this out. Is it due to firewire 800 step down using the thunderbolt dongle?
Thanks
Frustrated Apple user (again!).

Internal RAID Drives Disappeared from Desktop & Finder

A few days ago, one of my two internal mirrored RAID sets no longer showed on the desktop or in the Finder Sidebar. A day later, the other internal RAID set disappeared from desktop and sidebar. The two remaining internal non-RAID drives show up as do two external drives. All internal and external hard drives still show under Disk Utility and Photoshop Bridge CS3.
I checked Finder Preferences and boxes are checked to show internal and external drives on the desktop and sidebar. I looked at the drive detail under Disk Utility and nothing looks wrong with the two RAID sets ON-LINE. I unmounted one RAID set and re-mounted without any change. I tried unchecking the two preference boxes to not show the drives and rebooted, rechecking the boxes and rebooting and nothing changed on the desktop or sidebar.
Does anyone have any suggestions to resolve this?

Well our invisible drives problem is resolved but it's not the solution that I'd hoped for.
We visited the Genius Bar at a local Apple store and they denied any knowledge of problems with invisible drives in Macs and discounted my reports from Mac forums.
I went home and ordered a new 1tb Seagate drive. When it arrived, I installed it in bay 2, copied each invisible drive to the new drive one-at-a-time, broke my two sets of internal mirrored drives, erased all the affected drives and reloaded them. Now all drives are visible on the Desktop and Finder again.
I'm hoping that the disappearing drive problem doesn't surface again but view this as an unresolved Apple issue. Now I can look at other mass storage options for future growth.

Internal drive disappeared. Shows up as "Media" & 0 bytes

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