Internal hard drives won't appear in Disk Util

I have a bizarre problem with my hard drives now. I'm on a 2.4GHz Core2Duo Macbook Pro 15" with 10.5.4. I've switched the hard drive a couple of times before with no issues whatsoever. Now, with the exception of the brand new one that won't hold an install, my internal hard drives don't show up in the install disk's Disk Utility.
I got a new hard drive to try the other day, installed it, booted to my OSX install disk to use Disk Utility. I switched the new disk to GUID and formatted it as journaled like usual. It took 4 hours to do the install, then after the restart it tanked. It booted back to the install disk where I checked it out. It could not repair the file system, and the drive was not "mounted". I mounted it, repartitioned and formatted it, and installed again. This time it stopped halfway through the installation and said the drive might be corrupt.
I unplugged the cable and battery, held the power button for over 5 secs, then just let it sit for about 10minutes with no power source while I thought about this. I put the original drive back in, booted into OSX, and put the new hard drive in an external USB enclosure. I formatted it while in OSX, then rebooted into the install disk and installed OSX on it while it was in the USB case. It took the installation more quickly (about an hour and a half...still not 20min like my old 7200rpm Hitachi 200g), then I booted into its OSX while in the USB drive. It booted ok, so I downloaded the updates and clicked to install them. It then went into a revolving restart. Eventually I decided it was not doing this because it was happy so I shut it off.
I swapped the hard drive out with another new one, and this one would not complete an installation while inside the computer either. It acted similarly while in the USB case. HOWEVER it would always show up as unmounted after a restart and would not recognize the drive inside the computer as a bootable disk.
I put my original drive in there to give up, and it gave me the ? folder. I booted to the install disk and it did not show up in the disk utility. I put my old hard drive in the USB case, booted to the install disk, and it showed that it was there, but unmounted and it could not repair the file system.
I repartitioned my hard drive (i have time machine working..not a huge setback) in the USB case and put it back in the computer. It still would not show up in disk utility. I put it back in the USB case, installed OSX onto it (in about 20min), restarted a couple times, saw that it was working, put it into my computer, and got the ? folder again.
I went out and bought a stardard 160GB SATA 5400rpm Seagate drive to try in there, and this fresh drive is not recognized inside the computer either when I boot into disk utility.
The brand new hard drive WILL show up in Disk Utility when I boot to it from the install disk, but it will not survive a complete installation.
So now I'm running OSX from my original hard drive in a USB case until I can figure out why the old disk recognized inside my laptop is the new hard drive upgrade, but it cannot complete an installation on it.
I'm originally a Windows slave, so I can only think in terms of AHCI or SATA-card drivers, or screwed up bios. But this is all pre-os-boot, and the apple firmware seems to be pretty automatic in picking the right settings to see stuff.

I kind of feel like drawing a flowchart to show all that I've tried. Its difficult to keep everything intelligible while listing the entire last week's efforts at 2:45am. :-/
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41951
I also explained it here, perhaps a bit differently. Maybe some reply there might spark someone's memory of a possible problem. I understand the nature of computers (been 100% geek for 20 years), but I'm hoping there's someone out there with the specific Apple expertise to help me out. Eventually the processes I've taken and my specific situation will become clearer as the questions widdle away at this.
My original 7200rpm SATA drive that works fine won't show up when connected to the SATA cable. I've repartitioned it with HFS, and repartitioned it as free space in the USB enclosure. It simply won't show up in Disk Util. Same with the brand new test SATA drive.
The new SSD SATAII does show up, but after a 4hr install the partition is unmounted and won't show up as a boot option. I can boot to the install disk and repartition it, reinstall, or remount it. But it will never be mounted to be booted from while connected to the computer. I've had 2 of the SSD's to try, one survived one restart, then went into a never-ending restart cycle after I installed the updates. The 2nd has never successfully been mounted after the install to boot from. Now nothing can be mounted to boot from within the computer. I have to boot off of any of these drives from the USB enclosure.
If I install OSX on them while in the USB enclosure, that works, but they will not mount when connected to the SATA cable inside the lappy. The platter style SATA drives won't even be recognized...
Thanks for the instant reply, this is driving me nuts 'cuz it makes almost no sense. Thanks so much to everyone that contributes. I appreciate everything.

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My internal hard drives don't appear in disk utility. Can't install os X

Hi,
I have a macpro. In this computer are 4 1TB hard drives. They were set up as a raid set. I booted my comp with a snow leopard install disk and opened raid utility to delete the raid set so I can install os X on one hard drive and use the other hard drives to store files. After deleting the raid set, I opened disk utility to find no disks in which I can reformat or even install snow leopard. What steps do I take now to ensure all disks are useable and that I can install my operating system on one of them?

Drive Preparation
1. Boot from your OS X 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.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
Now if you wish you can repeat Steps 2 and 3 on the other three drives. Or you can do it after installing OS X.
Once you have one drive reformatted you can quit DU and install OS X.

Internal hard drive does not mount in disk utility

My internal hard drive no longer mounts in Disk Utility. It is grayed out. I have extraordinarily frequent spinning beach ball/freezes, in Safari or Apple Mail. The most recent symptom: upon rebooting or just starting up, I see flashing black on the display. This has been occuring for more than six months. Of course, I have made total and frequent backup's. I bought new RAM, but have not yet installed it, and I susect this might help. I have done repeted troubleshooting many times each: Apple's Disk Doctor, Repaired Permissions, Reinstalled the Mac OS, safe boot, Alsoft's Disk Warrior, Apple's longer Harware Test, etc. I have worked as a new user, too. All tests done report that all is well. What od you thnk the problem is? Must I drive 1.5 hrs. each way to the Genius Bar at my nearest Apple Store? Might I try to erase the hard drive as a fix? I hate to do this, only as a last resort, as it is so time-consuming. Should I just update my Mac OS? Please advise, out there, if anyone can offer any advice, I would be greatly appreciative.

The list of issues you posted probably would not get shorter if you attempt to 'upgrade them' away, as usually that kind of effort is not effective yet may expose more of the same problems while not necessarily revealing the original weakness. Another OS X installed over a set of problems seldom helps.
How full is the hard disk drive? If it is too full, or has been very busy in use several years, it may be time to replace the HDD and perhaps put a larger capacity one in the computer. And if the main computer hardware checks out OK (tested under a variety of duration and stress tests) then also consider a RAM upgrade if the device is not already at the maximum capacity.
When was the last time the hard disk drive was devoid of content, maybe wiped -- erased and reformatted by a third party disk utility or have a utility overwrite the entire HDD with zeros? This used to be a common tech service in the course of a major effort to restore a Mac. Or Defragment?
If you can do the latter, this could help resolve bad sectors and remove old data or corruption on the hard drive. Or get a new HDD and before committing a new OS X install & apps to it (or a re-clone of a complete backup) test the drive and be sure it is ready for use. Not all new drives are perfectly ready; some need to get exercise first.
I'd bet on a new hard disk drive of larger capacity (also note spin RPM rate and data speeds) and a full RAM upgrade.
If you have a backup clone on an external hard disk drive (in a boot-capable enclosure) you could really go to town and before you erase the main/only hard drive, make a backup clone and test its ability to boot the Mac. Or put the old drive and content in a suitable boot capable enclosure of the kind with its own power supply, and deal with it later.
Then consider a later version OS X -- whatever most recent version that model can support... {edited}
Good luck & happy computing!

Internal hard drive fails to mount in Disk Utility.

My internal hard drive fails to mount in Disk Utility for the past year, so I cannot verify it. However, it does mount in Disk Warrior. (1) I am concerned that it will not mount within the Apple software, and what that bodes for my computer. (2) I also have MANY spinning beach balls daily and have to use the power button to reboot. I just bought extra Crucial RAM and have yet to install it. Somehow, I don't think it wil help my issue # 1 though. Please advise, anyone out there! Thank you.

No, there are never any errors like that. Also, I have upgraded the Mac OS from 10.5 to 10.6.8. That did nothing. I backed up my Users = Christina folders to a good, 15 year old Firewire 800 La Cie 1 TB external hard drive. I also tested using the Apple Hardware test, which showed no problems, and Alsoft's Disk Warrior and defragged, and fixed a very minor issure re directory count, probably resulting from many improper shutdowns lately due to frozen spinning beach balls. None of these procedures alleviated the issues, and I still have the same issues: mainly that super-frequent spinning beach ball. Do you think I ought to install that new RAM sitting here finally? Perhaps it is a lack of RAM??I only have 2 lousy GB's of RAM after all! Thank you so very much for a reply.
Message was edited by: Flamingcreatures

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.

Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.

Replacement Hard Drive does not appear in Disk Utility.

I've replaced the defective HDD in my MBP(A1278) with a 500GB Western Digital one after it failed the Hard Drive test in AST. The old drive is detected internally without issue but the new one does not show up in disk utitlity. I have reformatted to use a GUID table and have made sure it's partition is OSX Journaled. It doesn't show up at all. I proceeded to do an install using a USB drive adapter and the OS installed just fine(same drive), when I put it back in the MBP it still doesn't detect. I would suspect the cable but the old drive shows up and runs diagnostic just fine(fails). I've actually gone ahead and tried three other new drives(2 seagates(500GB, 1TB XT) and 1 500GB HGST) and none of them detect, only the original. Am I missing some sort of firmware update or is there a limited physical issue?
All help would be appreciated, genius bar isn't an option, the closest one is 400km away.

Until you replace the cable you won't know for sure. Do you have a SATA to USB adapter to connec these other drive to and to connect your original drive to? If you do connect the original drive and do a Verify Disk in Disk Utility. If it comes back OK, no repair needed or even if a repair is need that succeeds, your original drive is OK and it is the cable that is causing all the problems.
I suggest you stay away from WD drives. They don't have a good track record with Mac computers.

My external hard drive doesn't appear in disk utility

I've been using a western digital my book (500gb) external hard drive connected to my Airport Extreme for TIme Machine Backups. For no apparent reason, it stopped backing up a few days ago. I've plugged the drive directly into my MBP, and it doesn't appear in system profiler or disk utility. Any ideas how to get the MBP to mount the drive?

matthewfromlincoln wrote:
I've been using a western digital my book (500gb) external hard drive connected to my Airport Extreme for TIme Machine Backups.
I hate to have to tell you this, but backing-up that way is unreliable, and not supported by Apple. See Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk.
But, as ds store says, the disk is likely dead.

External hard drive won't appear on my desktop

I'm trying to run a backup, but my hard drive won't appear on my desktop. I see it in Disk Utility, so I know it's there...
...any suggestions?
Thanks,
kevin

Kevin - There might be a few reasons as to why your external drive won't appear have you tried any of these suggestions:-
STEP ONE - Confirm that the drive is being seen by the system
Click the Apple icon and select About This Mac.
Click More Info.
Select the Drives and Volumes tab.
If the Iomega Hard Disk drive is not listed under the USB/FireWire arrow, proceed to STEP THREE.
If the Hard Disk drive is listed, continue with the next step.
STEP TWO - Format the Hard Disk drive to Mac HFS format
The Iomega Hard Disk drive is factory formatted to FAT32 for maximum compatibility. If you have not reformatted the disk or the disk is formatted to FAT32:
The disk may mount very slowly in OS X if the disk is FAT32 formatted.
Mac OS X will not mount any DOS (FAT32) partition larger than 128GB. For more information, please check the Apple® Web site at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107483
Warning: Erasing your Hard Disk drive will erase all of the information stored on the disk. If possible, back up your data before erasing the hard drive. Mac formatted disks are not cross compatible with other operating systems, such as Windows®, without the purchase of additional third-party software.
Double-click the Mac hard drive icon.
Double-click the Applications folder.
Double-click the Utilities folder.
Double-click the Disk Utilities icon.
Highlight the drive in the left window.
Click the Erase tab.
Select Mac OS Extended.
Click the Erase button and then click Erase from the confirmation window.
If the Hard Disk drive now mounts, you are ready to use the drive.
If the Hard Disk drive does not mount, continue with the next step.
STEP THREE - Are the Mac OS X drivers detecting the drive properly?
The Iomega Hard Drive may not mount if you are using Mac OS X versions under 10.1.3. If you are not using Mac OS X 10.1.3 or higher, please visit the Apple® Web site at http://www.apple.com/macosx/ for information on getting the latest version.

I have an external hard drive that shows up in disk utility but Verify and Restore are greyed out.

I have an external hard drive that shows up in disk utility but Verify and Restore are greyed out. I am trying to determine what is wrong with the drive.
I need the data on the drive and it won't show up in Disk Warrior. I have tried different Mac's and different USB cords only to find the same outcome. When selected in Disk Utility the information read as such...
Disk Description : WD Elements 1023 Media                      Total Capacity : 500.11 GB (500,105,740,288 Bytes)
Connection Bus : USB                                                               Write Status : Read/Write
Connection Type : External                                                     S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported
USB Serial Number : 575837314135304D36373132        Partition Map Scheme : Unformatted
As the drive shows in Disk Utility there must be some life left in it surely. There is a possibilty that the physical connection between the USB cord and the external drive is damaged but since the drive shows up I believe it's unlikely... before I give it to the pro's is there anything else I can do to diagnose the issue?

Hello,
I have just experienced the same thing!
Although my external drive shows in Disk Utility, it does not show in Finder.
And the Verify/Repair buttons are also greyed out.
Also, although the drive is 2TB. DU shows it as having Total Capacity of only 4.14GB! (Which should be the Free Space).
I was wondering if you solved your problem, & if so, would you share your solution.
I´m afraid to Erase in case I lose all my Data on the drive.
Thanks in advance for your reply!

My external drive won't mount. Disk Utility says it can't repair disk and to backup the disk and reformat, but how can I do that if it won't mount?

My external drive won't mount. Disk Utility says it can't repair disk and to backup the disk and reformat, but how can I do that if it won't mount?

See mount section in 1st linked article.
Disk Unmount Using Terminal
Disk Utility – Force Mount Disk

Drive Enclosure hard drive won't appear on desktop

I just recently bought the Tekserve Aluminum FireWirk 400 Drive Enclosure.
I had an internal hard drive on my G3 that I tock out and installed into the
enclosure. The hard drive seems to start up and the blue enclosure light is on but the drive dose not appear on my desk top of my Mac mini.
Machine Name:Mac mini
Machine Model:PowerMac10,2
CPU Type:PowerPC G4 (1.5)
I tried disk utility and got the following.
Disk Utility
74.5 GB macpower
Disk Description :Macpower
Total Capacity :74.5 GB (80,026,361,856 Bytes)
Connection Bus :FireWire
Write Status : Read/Write
Connection Type :External
S.M.A.R.T. Status :Not Supported
Connection ID :512384776805421
I TRIED RUNNING A DISK REPAIR.
BELOW IS THE LOG REPORT
Mac OS X Version 10.4.6 (Build 8I127)
2006-07-17 14:02:47 -0400
2006-07-17 14:02:48.378 SystemUIServer[76] lang is:en
Jul 17 14:04:53 michael-coynes-mac-mini diskarbitrationd[35]: unable to repair /dev/disk1s6 (status code 0x00000008).
Disk Utility started.
Verify and Repair disk “X”
Invalid Volume Header
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid node structure
Rebuilding Catalog B-tree.
The volume X could not be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
Disk Utility stopped repairing “X” because the following error was encountered:
The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error
Repair attempted on 1 volume
1 volume could not be repaired
Verify permissions for “Macintosh HD”
Determining correct file permissions.
parent directory ./Users/Shared/SC Info does not exist
Permissions differ on ./private/var/log/secure.log, should be -rw------- , they are -rw-r-----
Permissions verification complete
The privileges have been verified or repaired on the selected volume
Mount of “X” succeeded
Mount of “X” succeeded
Verify and Repair disk “X”
Invalid Volume Header
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid node structure
Rebuilding Catalog B-tree.
The volume X could not be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
Any suggestions?
Thanks
-Mike

Hey Mike,
If you need the data off the drive then you'll have to purchase another disk utility program like Disk Warrior.
If you don't need the data then I suggest you just partition it and start fresh. I have "fixed" a few drives by just partitioning them. Please note: you will loose everything on the drive!
Greg

External Hard Drive won't appear on PC (want cross platform)

I have an external USB Hard Drive. I formatted it using the Disk Utility, OS Format and Journaling. Did a small partition in case I needed a system boot drive. Now my sis needed to backup her laptop (Dell laptop), but the drive won't appear in My Computer, it recognizes there is a USB device on the lower task bar, but no drive anywhere.
Do I have to reformat? what steps do I need to make this USB drive cross-platform friendly?
Paul

Hi, Paul.
You may not want to reformat the drive as FAT-32 since there is a limit on the size of the partition, the maximum file size, and other issues, especially if her Dell's drive is formatted as NTFS (FAT-32 does not support NTFS extended attributes). FAT-32 is unsuitable for backing-up Mac OS X volumes as it cannot preserve the extended attributes (permissions, etc.) employed by Mac OS X.
It's really best if you each have your own external hard drive for backup, as part of implementing a comprehensive Backup and Recovery solution, such as I use and detail in my "Backup and Recovery" FAQ. You also don't want one person inadvertently writing over another person's backups, which could happen if one is not careful. Furthermore, it is often easiest for recovery.
How one handles backup in cross-platform environments is tricky and depends on the native formats employed by the different computers involved, and whether backup will be performed over a network or by directly connecting backup drives to the computers one is backing up.
To enable her Dell to use the Mac-formatted drive, install Mediafour's MacDrive for Windows on the PC. MacDrive for Windows is probably the state-of-the-art application for enabling you to use Mac-formatted disks and hard drives on Windows-based PCs.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Internal hard drive for use as scratch disk

Am running OS 10.4.11 on a dual core 2.3 Ghz PowerPC G5. Want to install a 2nd internal hard drive for use as a scratch disk w/ FCP and for my media files, etc. Given that I can only accomodate an SATA I drive w/ 150 Gbps transfer rate what might some decent choices be for a 500 Gb to 1 TB drive suited for video (and a PowerPC G5)? I'll also be adding an external drive for backup if anyone has any suggestions.

Thanks for the recommendations. I had been looking at the Hitachi CinemaStar series but you have to reset the drive to SATA 1 for use w/ a G5 PowerMac. Resetting the drive, according to Hitachi, can only be done on a PC which I don't have access to. And I think that holds true for all their drives that are not strictly SATA 1.

G5 tower now boots, but one of the internal hard drives won't mount!

For those of you who saw my previous thread, my G5 tower would turn on and play the startup chime, then sit there until the fans ramped up. It seems that the problem was the Belkin PCI card. I removed it, and the machine started up with no problems.
Now, however, one of my internal hard drives (not the primary one) won't mount. Various programs can't even tell it's there. I'm completely lost as to how to solve this problem. My first thought was to try to swap it into an external case to see if it would mount that way. Thoughts?

One, possible two posts should read ground. Test for continuity against the metal case. Another should read 5V+DC. I think the four prong are: ground, ground, illumination then power. The connectors are gold plated and should not corrode, however, they are no match against fine particles of dust. You can carefully unplug both sides of the drive connections and vacuum. Usually, to unplug and re-plug is enough to get it to work again. When there no power coming off the logic board, you can find a Y-splitter and power off the other drive.

Internal Hard Drive Won't Load

Specs:
iMac Mid 2007 OSC 10.9.4
Processor: 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
500 GB Hard Drive
So, my hard drive began acting funky about a year ago (would freeze at startup or freeze when trying to click on the Desktop). I restarted my iMac and loaded the installation DVD, using a USB-Hard Drive as my Startup Disk (I know, I know...). Ever since this issue I've just booted from this hard drive and made do with the reduction in speed from using a USB-connected hard drive, as there weren't any significant problems from going about this way.
Lately, though, applications have become significantly slower, to the point where loading more than one tab on Safari or switching from App to App causes the rainbow wheel to spin for a few seconds, forcing me to finally turn to you guys to see if you all could provide any advice.
I tried all the Safe Boot options/resetting the PRAM (at least, I think I've tried them all) and none seem to produce any worthwhile results. Even inserting the Install Disk didn't seem to help. I'm able to view my internal hard drive, launch applications from it, and so forth, but something seems to be corrupted/wrong with it being my Startup Disk.
I've tried Disk Utility to see the problem, and this is what comes up:
When Repairing Disk Permissions: nothing comes up...'Permissions repair complete'.
When Repairing Disk: "Error: Live file system is not supported".
My initial question (which will probably be revised once someone redirects me to what my main issue is) would be: Would I be able to completely erase my internal hard drive, repartition it, then clone my USB drive to this? Would that work the way I'd think it would? Or is the problem deeper than that?
Thank you.

The smart status is just the first thing to check, if you think there could be an issue with a drive. What I would do, if it was my computer. I would make sure all data I wanted was off the internal drive. I would then format the internal drive, and create a new partition. Then put a clean system on the internal drive. Use migration assistant to move the users, data and applications form the USB drive you have been using.
If I got errors, crashing or very slow functionality from the internal drive, I would look at replacing the drive.

Internal hard drives won't appear in Disk Util

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