Main internal drive gone: won't mount

Hello, everybody:
My primary internal drive has…gone away. This morning, after the screen had slept (the computer is set never to sleep) the machine wouldn't respond--obviously frozen. No key sequences would jar it loose, so I shut it down with the power switch on the cpu. On reboot, it booted from the second, or original, drive, which I had abandoned a few years ago after it had begun to fail, but which I had left in its bay when I installed the replacement (which is now my primary). Now, that failing one is the only internal drive it sees. I then booted from an external firewire drive--my backup--but even now, while running from that drive, neither disk utility nor the "diskutil list" command line shows any trace of my primary internal drive. It doesn't even show up when I run System Profiler from the "About this Mac" Apple-menu item. Before I remove and reconnect the vanished drive in a hopeful attempt to correct what might be merely a loose connection, can anyone steer me toward a probable cause of this problem?
My best to you,
James.

Well, I disconnected and reconnected the drive, and still zero. Nothing seems to see it. I'm downloading DataRescue II right now, but tonight I think I'll be shopping for drives. This is the second Maxtor drive that's gone south in less than four years, and this one lasted for only two years and change. You have a favorite drive or brand that you've found fast and reliable?

Similar Messages

Please Help - Hard Drive Gone - Won't Mount - No AppleCare...

Hi guys,
I'm in trouble here..
I was loading a bunch of photos from an external drive to iPhoto and my iMac froze up for a long time.
I couldn't do anything at all - so I finally force-powered down.
When I powered back up - My Hard Drive was gone and Finder will not open.
Other applications in my dock such as web browsers, iTunes etc. seem to be unaffected - I can also access Disk Utility and other Apps through Spotlight, but No sign of my "Macintosh HD".
I ran a "Verify Disk" in Disk Utility - and here's the report it provided:
Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
Volume Header needs minor repair
The volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair
---The "Repair Disk" Button in Disk Utility is all grayed out though so I can't run it...
I'm at a loss. I can't afford AppleCare, and they won't help me because I'm just out of my 90 day phone support...
I'm on an Intel Core 2 Duo iMac - the last Glossy White one before the new ones.
I've got the latest version of Tiger.
Any advice would be a Godsend. I'm afraid I may have ruined my iMac.
Thanks!

We usually try to give folks who come here simplified advice that keeps them comfortable troubleshooting and repairing their Macs and won;t raise other issues for them. Command line tools don't usually fall into the simplified category and fsck for Mac OS X Tiger is not recommended by Apple, except as a last resort. It is known to cause other issues.
From the Apple Knowledge Base article that Dale has linked below;
Note: If you're using Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you should use Disk Utility instead of fsck, whenever possible.
If you can successfully start up in Safe Mode or use Disk Utility while started up from a disc, you don't need to use fsck.
IMO, it isn't helpful for you to come along and contradict sound advice from folks who have used the Knowledge Base and are aware of Apple's recommendations because you think that you know better.

One of my internal drive's won't mount

I accidently removed an internal hard drive from one of the bays in my mac pro while the computer was sleeping (I thought it was shut down). Now, when I insert the drive back into the bay it will not mount. I've run First Aid from the disk utility several times and it's indicated as being ok but when I try to mount it I get a "mount failed" error message. Can anyone help?

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.

External Iomega Drive Partition won't mount

Hi:
I have a partition on my Iomega external drive that won't mount. The drive has 2 partitions. One I use for back up works fine. This other one is visiable but won't mount. I have run disk utitility and it says everything is fine but says it isn't journaled. It won't let me turn on journaling and won't let me get it mounted, what can I do?

Hi Dennis:
Thank you for your attempt at helping me. I opened Disk Utility and saw the greyed out "video Editing" partition, clicked on it and tried to mount it. It says it cannot mount the volume. I then clicked on the greyed out drive partition and clicked on disk first aid. It gives me the following screen.
Verify and Repair volume “Video Editing”
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Video Editing appears to be OK.
It just plain won't mount but I have in the past been able to see the contents inside and the other partition for which I use as back up for my iMac works just fine so I know the drive is working fine. I just cannot get this partition to mount.
Any other ideas?
Thank you,
Reid

My external hard drive suddenly won't mount.

I have a mac 0sx version 10.5.8. My WD hard drive suddenly won't mount. Tried running a repair with disc utility-no luck.

Your best bet is DiskWarrior...
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

Hard Drive In 2nd Internal Bay Sometimes won't mount

I recently installed a second internal drive in my computer. My main problem is sometimes the drive won't mount. If I turn off the computer for a while it will finally mount but that's not good enough. One day it may not mount at all. What I want to know is; does anybody else have this problem and if so, how did you fix it?
Or better yet, is there a command I can use in Terminal to mount the drive?
G5 Dual 2.5 GHz; 4.5 Gig Ram; Logic Pro 7.1.1 Mac OS X (10.4.5) 2nd internal 160 gig hard drive installed

Barry, make sure all of your connections are seated properly. I had this same problem with a SP 1.8 PowerMac, and the problem was that the cable was not seated well which disrupts the signals from getting to the drive. This caused the drive to mount sometimes, and not mount others. Check connections at the drive and motherboard.
Jeff Weinberg

Booting from external, need to stop bad internal drive from trying to mount

I have an Intel iMac with a bad internal drive. It won't mount, but makes several clicks every few seconds trying to access the drive. Eventually I will take it in for repair, but I don't want to be without it for several days and it is working fine with the external drive.
It's not a huge problem, but the clicking gets annoying. Does anyone have suggestions on how I can disable the drive or prevent the computer from trying to access it? I don't want to physically disable it unless it is a simple procedure. I'm hoping there is a software solution via OS X or Terminal commands.
I should say that I found some instructions to prevent a drive from mounting, but it requires the drive's UUID which I can't get unless it mounts. Also, I don't know if this will stop the clicking. Anyway, here are the instructions. Perhaps there is a way to do something similar without knowing the UUID or by knowing the UUID of the working drives? I appreciate any help.
1. Open Disk Utility
2. Select the bad drive, then click the Info button
3. Copy the Universal Unique Identifier (UUID) code
4. Open a Terminal window and type: sudo pico /etc/fstab
5. Enter your password
6. Enter the line below (using your own UUID):
UUID=CDB15826-88A3-36AC-8009-3E71355F0B18 none hfs rw,noauto
(taken from http://www.macseven.com/files/20070719how_to_prevent_a_drive_volume_frommounting.html)

I don't know if it can be done using software solution (I think not). It's possible to remove the drive physically but it is rather tricky. see this thread for instructions
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=630315

External hard drive suddenly won't mount, but shows in Disk Utility.

Running OS 10.6.8... Disk Utility sees it and there's no issues when verified or repaired. The partition is grayed out and won't mount through Disk Utility. I've also tried mounting via Terminal, but same result. I've connected other drives, so I know it's not the wires or ports. When I turn the power on, it spins up and seems to be working properly. I don't have another mac to test it on. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Here's the info from Disk Utility:
Name :     BACKUP
    Type :     Volume
    Disk Identifier :     disk1s10
    Mount Point :     Not mounted
    File System :     Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
    Connection Bus :     FireWire
    Device Tree :     IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/RP05@1C,4/FWBR@0/FRWR@0/node@30e0f4e010a9d6/sbp-2@c000
    Writable :     Yes
    Universal Unique Identifier :     C3BC8998-F686-3A0F-A1AF-11260799EABA
    Capacity :     319.94 GB (319,937,773,568 Bytes)
    Owners Enabled :     No
    Can Turn Owners Off :     Yes
    Can Be Formatted :     Yes
    Bootable :     Yes
    Supports Journaling :     Yes
    Journaled :     No
    Disk Number :     1
    Partition Number :     10

You don't have a PowerMac if you have a Mac Pro. You don't have a PowerMac if you have Mac OS X 10.6. PowerMac is the name for the desktop professional Macs prior to mid-2006.   Two possibilities, the drive is dead, or the drive has a bad directory.   For a fee you can isolate either on my FAQ*:
http://www.macmaps.com/directoryfaq.html
* Links to some of my pages may give me compensation.

External hard drive suddenly won't mount

Although I've not had a problem with this drive in the past, it all of a sudden won't mount. It has all my music on and stalled while I was using iTunes, the timer wheel came up and was still the same after 20 minutes so I closed down. Now the drive won't mount at all so I can't even try repairing the disk. I've tried swapping from firewire to USB cables and also going through a hub, neither have worked.
It's a Lacie and the power light stays continuously orange on it and it feels like it's working overtime.
PLEASE HELP!

A little bit more on this... I looked at the instructions for the Lacie and it said that some smaller laptops may require a power cable via a USB port and back into the Lacie, which now works but I'm wondering why this has happened all of a sudden and can I rectify it??
I've deleted a load of stuff off my ibook hard drive, like photos etc, thinking that would help but it hasn't. Plus, I've recently installed an extra 1gb power card.
What can I do to avoid having to plug all these peripherals in to access my music?

G drive mini won't mount via firewire 800. usb ok

It hasnt been too long i bought myself a gdrive mini to benefit from the firewire 800 port. It seems that once my macbook gets warm the drive won't mount. It mounts just fine via usb. I've been to the genius bar twice and it worked both times, thats when i noticed it only happens when its warm. I was convinced its a software issue, but i dont know what to think anymore.
Has anyone encounter this issue? Any ideas of whats causing this?
Any help would be greatly appreciated

WAIT WAIT EVERYONE....READ THIS....VERY SIMPLE FIX!
My G mini 750GB drive stopped mounting.....I tried a million methods to get the G mini drive to mount and searched a ton of forums but never found this VERY EASY FIX. Try powering down your computer (imac in my case), then UNPLUG the power supply from the back of the computer....VERY IMPORTANT TO UNPLUG COMPUTER FROM ELECTRIC SOURCE. Nothing else worked for me.
Wait a minute, then plug back in and re-boot....MAGIC - freakin G mini showed up on desk top!
Good Lord why is this simple fix not all over the G mini site?????? It ought to be on the front of the box when you buy this thing! Seems no one at G mini sites talk about this and people are sending drives all over for repair!
Hope this helps!

S.M.A.R.T. failed on main internal drive, is my disk dying?

Hi,
Wanted to repair permissions before updating to 10.6.8 only to find a red message saying my main internal disk is damaged beyond repair, s.m.a.r.t checkup has failed.
I was able to repair damages on the HD with disk utility but not the media drive.
My iMac works fine, no slow-ups, no bugs, no freezes, nothing, only the message saying my disk is damaged.
I have an iMac i7 2.8 GHz (late 2009) with 1To media drive with a HD with 99,86 Go running 10.6.8. (I was able to update), 4 Go 1067 mHz DDR3 Ram.
I consider my iMac like new, still have 629 Go available disk space.
Should I ignore this message since every thing seems in working order or I am looking for trouble?
Thank's

I would say to replace the HD. You can run additional tests in Apple Hardware Test to verify and also download and SMART Utility at:
http://www.volitans-software.com/smart_utility.php
BTW If the machine is covered by AppleCare then this will certainly be covered.
Of course make sure the system has at least one viable backup using either Time Machine or a bootable clone using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner or preferable both TM & the clone.
Roger

10.4.9 and now USB Hard Drive(s) Won't Mount

After running the combo updater on my Intel Core Duo iMac 17" my LaCie BigDisk won't mount nor will my 60GB USB hard drive that I use to backup my MacBook (though this drive DOES mount on the MacBook without any problems). All other USB devices (and my 160GB Western Digital USB Hard Drive and 300GB Seagate FireWire hard drive mount and work fine on the iMac). My LaCie BigDisk wouldn't mount on my MacBook at first, but eventually mounted ONCE on the MacBook. I have tried repairing permissions, rebooting, using an older IOUSBFamily.kext (that was a nightmare and required some CLI experience to undo without having to find a firewire cable that long enough to reach around my desk to use the iMac via Target Mode on the MacBook good thing I saved the original).
At any rate here is the error output in Console.app:
Mar 13 20:32:59 iMac kernel[0]: USBF: 426. 4 ControlTransaction: control packet 1 error 0xe0004057
Mar 13 20:32:59 iMac kernel[0]: USBF: 426. 4 AppleUSBEHCI[0x3af4000]::DeviceRequest - buffer dmaCommand (0x39b3900) already had memory descriptor (0x3f54a00) - clearing
Mar 13 20:32:59 iMac kernel[0]: USBF: 426. 5 AppleUSBEHCI[0x3af4000]::ControlPacketHandler - unexpected command BufferMemoryDescriptor(0x46a0d00)
Mar 13 20:32:59 iMac kernel[0]: USBF: 426. 35 AppleUSBEHCI[0x3af4000]::DeviceRequest - dmaCommand (0x39b3900) already had memory descriptor (0x46a0d00) - clearing
Mar 13 20:34:08 iMac kernel[0]: USBF: 495.663 AppleUSBEHCI[0x3af4000]::Found a transaction which hasn't moved in 5 seconds on bus 253, timing out!
[Above Repeating for a long time]
Mar 13 20:34:12 iMac kernel[0]: USBF: 499.351 [0x3bd7800] The IOUSBFamily is having trouble enumerating a USB device that has been plugged in. It will keep retrying. (Port 2 of hub @ location: 0xfd300000)
Mar 13 20:34:12 iMac kernel[0]: USBF: 499.352 [0x3bd7800] The IOUSBFamily was not able to enumerate a device
Any help would be appreciated!

Anyone else having this problem?
Possibly.. my Lacie hard drive (firewire) has stopped working since I updated to 10.4.9 with the device attached. See: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=889519&tstart=45
iMac G5 iSight 2.1GHz, iBook G4 1.42GHz, iMac G3 Snow 700MHz, 2x iSight Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Lost My Main Internal Drive in Device List

I somehow unmounted my main internal hard drive and as a result I do not see it in my device list. So i do not have access to the root of my drive. As a new Mac user I do not know if I am explaining this correctly. But any help would be greatly appreciated.

Ok - got in touch with SmithMicro and learned this is actually a known issue in Mac OS X and that Apple is working on it. The fix, from Apple's site, involves first downloading the Developer xcode tools over here:
http://developer.apple.com/technology/xcode.html
Its a pretty big download, about a gig, but once installed do this:
Fire up Terminal and type: (make sure to include spaces)
/Developer/Tools/SetFile -a v / and press return
You may see an error (-5000). If so, it means you need administrator access to the root. Type this:
sudo /Develper/Tools/SetFile -a v / It will ask for your password. Type it in, however be careful as it will not appear in terminal at all - just type it, then press return. Presto! Icons are back. It resets a visibility flag.
Might want to then exit and restart. Icon should appear on both desktop and finder toolbar.
Hopefully we'll see an update from Apple that address's this against future installs. Apparently there are a number of apps that when installed can cause this, so it's not poser's fault entirely.
Hope this has helped anyone with this problem! -Robert

Drive Suddenly Won't Mount

I've had a 500GB Seagate external drive connected via firewire for my Time Machine for awhile now. I've used time machine with it to recover files, it always mounted and ejected fine, never had any problems, etc.
Today, all of a sudden, it won't mount. The weird part is the drive is operating. Something is writing to it - it's write light is blinking and I can hear it working. Still won't mount. I tried it on a different mac, same deal. It shows up in Disk Utility, but all of the buttons are grayed out. I can't verify or repair it. When I try to erase the drive via Disk Utility, it says it failed because "Resource Busy". Time machine is not writing to it. What the **** could be writing to it without me knowing?!
Anyone experience this before?

For some reason, with my WD 160GB drive, when I plug it in and it turns on, but it never mounts. I have to go into disk utility and wait, and wait, and wait, until it shows up in disk utility (a few minutes) then I have to select the drive and click on mount. It started doing this within the past few months. I have no idea why, but it's a pain.

Seagate drive GoflexD won't mount.

Wouldn't mount on a PPC iMac (circa 2006 running 10.5.8) and won't mount on my new iMac either. Drive shows up on "about this Mac" under USB (3.0 SuperSpeed bus- FA GoFlex D esk) but doesn't show in disk utility. After many calls to Seagate they suggested a new cable and that had no effect. Eventually,they exchanged the drive and gave me a new one. The new one didn't mount on the old iMac or the new iMac. And,yes, I've disconnected and reconnected the USB cable,power supply and rebooted several times.
As I never trashed anything on the original hard drive I haven't lost any data so,I guess,I can discard the Seaflex and try another drive.
Any suggestions?

Is there any help under 'More Like This' on the right? >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Main internal drive gone: won't mount

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for