Major trouble: hard drive disappeared

Hi to all.
A friend of mine is facing a major trouble.
He has an iMac and an old LaCie firewire400 external box with a PATA Seagate 200GB drive inside.
While it was transferring into the iMac a bunch of files it had a message that was impossible to transfer a file then he clicked cancel and fired up disk utility that said it wasn't able to repair the drive.
After that he made a reboot.
At this point the drive wasn't seen anymore by disk utility nor by DataRescue 3.1 and he decided to take a part the FW box and he connected the drive into another FW400 box with the same result.
Same story with another USB 2.0 external case.
Then he tried to connect the drive as a slave to the ide channel of an old PowerMac with the result that the PowerMac, with the drive connected, remained stuck on a gray screen.
As a final tentative to help my friend i connected the drive to the ide channel of my Asus-based PC with MacDrive running:
after the longer boot time i've ever seen it showed the drive and it was possible to view the folder structure and the files inside with the probably correct dimensions but with file types completely screwed up.
I tought that if we find a way to make the drive visible for Data Rescue or others recovery utilities running on the iMac we can try to recover something.
Any help will be deeply appreciated.
Message was edited by: leoluca lolli
Message was edited by: leoluca lolli
Message was edited by: leoluca lolli

*_PROBLEM SOLVED: MAC OS IS THE GUILTY_*
I was very happy to solve my friend's big issue but i'm very sad because i'm an old Apple user and fan.
Resuming the story:
- An external USB 2.0 320GB (see here below the specifics) HFS+ formatted drive with around 100GB of Mac files backupped inside, was connected to a new iMac.
- Started the copy it gave a message of problems in one or more files
- Canceled operation
- Started disk utility it say something like major problems were found and it unmounted the drive
- From that point the drive wasn't seen anymore by the iMac
- Tried 2 different FW400 cases and another 1 USB 2.0 case
- Tried a direct connection to the IDE bus on an old Powermac
- Tried Diskutility, DataRescue 3.1, TechtoolPro etc., the drive is completely invisible for Mac Os
- Tried to connect to the IDE bus on a PC (XP pro SP3) with Macdrive 7 installed
- The drive WAS seen but with file types messed up
- Installed Macdrive 8 on the PC: the drive WAS seen and the file types seemed CORRECT
- ALL FILES AND DOCUMENTS were successfully copied on another drive and now we verified that ALL files ARE WORKING PERFECTLY.
As you can see beyond the Seagate utility stated that the drive is HEALTHY with no problem on its hardware.
The Mac Os still DOESN'T see this drive.
I will be very happy if some Apple Guru can explain me something about this story, that, to cut a long story short, teached me that a PC fully recovered issues created by a Mac.
Thanks in advance.
--------------- SeaTools for Windows v1.2.0.4 ---------------
16/11/2010 21.33.54
Modello: ST3320620A
Numero Seriale: ******
Firmware Revisione: 3.AAC
Identifica - Iniziato 16/11/2010 21.33.54
SMART - RIUSCITO 16/11/2010 21.41.43
Identifica - Iniziato 16/11/2010 21.41.59
Rapido Test Automatico Unit - Iniziato 17/11/2010 16.20.18
Rapido Test Automatico Unit - RIUSCITO 17/11/2010 16.21.34
Generico Ridotto - Iniziato 17/11/2010 16.23.58
Generico Ridotto - RIUSCITO 17/11/2010 16.30.17
Identifica - Iniziato 17/11/2010 16.35.12
SMART: Supported and enabled
Caratteristiche indirizzoa 48 bit impostazione supportata: Vero
Max LBA: 625142448
Host Protetto Area funzionalità: Supported and enabled
Gestione di Energia obbligatoria: Supported and enabled
Protezione Modalità: Supported not enabled
Inpostazione MAX estensione di sicurezza: Supported not enabled
Opzioni risparmio Energia Avanzate: Non Supportato
Scarica Firmware: False
Supportata autoverifica SMART: True
SMART registrazione errore supportata: True
Temperatura dell'unit (C): 38/100
Power-On Ore: 566

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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
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-1 Pioneer "Superdrive" DVD-R/W/CD-R/W on Internal ATA 0 ID=0
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-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).**
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-2 OEM USB (1) ports
Peripherals that have worked in various configurations with this system over the past 3 years:
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Applications on System Hard Drive that I have OEM CDs for:
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Other CDs I have:
OEM CDs for Power Mac G4:
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-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:
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-Toast Audio Extractor 1.1
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Applications on system Hard Drive I use if my wife is busy on our Windows XP machine:
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# 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:
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-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:
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-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

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Thanks,
Gary

Hi Gary, certainly frustrating.
Only thing I can think of trying is booting from your Restore Partition using CMD+r, then try to install on one of those drives... if it lasts long enough... thinking this may tll us if it's HW or SW issue.
Though if you had a 10.6 Install Disc to boot from I think that'd be a better test.
Or...
Open Console in Utilities & see if there are any clues or repeating messages when this happens.

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

I am trying to free up space on my internal hard drive (MacBook Air). I copied my iTunes TV shows onto an external hard drive, following all instructions carefully. They were all there on the external drive - I opened a few and they played perfectly. I then went back into iTunes and deleted the shows, then emptied trash. When I went back into my external hard drive, all the TV shows had disappeared! Am now in process (yawn) of downloading the shows again onto my laptop, rather defeating my object of freeing up space. Can anyone tell me what I have done wrong?

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

External hard-drive disappeared after dragging into Spotlight

Dear users,
My external hard-drive under devices disappeared after I dragged it into Spotlight to reindex it to make it searchable.
There was a cloud puff animation when i dragged it from the devices icon on the left of folders to the spotlight privacy box window.
Please help. Thank you!

Hi there,
did you find out what the problem was or how to re-map the ext. HDD?
I have the same problem.
thank you.

External hard drive disappeared and doesn't mount

Hi all,
we're using a MacMini Server at work. As backup we use an external drive and Time Machine. It has been working nicely so far. However, two days ago the external drive just disappeared. It neither shows up on the desktop nor in finder or - and that's really strange - in Disk Utility. We tried all USB ports on the Mac - nothing. We connected the hard disk to four Windows computer and it worked fine (we couldn't access it as it's a different file system but it recognized a hard drive being connected).
Other USB devices work fine on the Mac. Keyboard, mouse, no problem. Just the hard disk and, that's also strange, all other USB storages also don't work. We have a USB card reader for SD cards. The card reader seems to work (the light is on), but the SD card isn't recognized. We also tried two memory sticks in all slots - they don't show up. Neither in disk utility nor in the finder.
Has anyone of you came across this issue?

had a similar problem with a SanDisk multi card reader,.. no idea why, just flakey.
- also check the CAPACITY of your cards, some card readers can only READ a card to a maximum of 'X' eg 8GB card, thus if you put eg a 16GB card in, they crash out..

Songs can't be found on computer or hard drive - disappeared overnight.

I synced my iPod yesterday. Today some songs - that synced successfully yesterday - are now no longer 'able to be found' on my computer's iTunes. I have just subscribed to iTunes Match. Any suggestions? A large number of songs have just... disappeared. Not happy.
Last week I transferred all of my music to an external hard drive. I thought that this could be the problem, but since then I have synced my iPod and there were no error messages and the currently missing songs still live on my iPod. I've searched my computer, as well as my external hard drive, with no sign of the files.
It's quite a few songs, and I am traveling and so no longer have the original CDs that they came from.
Have they simply disappeared to iTunes song heaven?
Thanks!

Did you recently erase and/or reinstall the OS?
And, some details are needed: model/year Mac, Mac OS version running now and which version originally).

Hard Drives disappearing

A few weeks ago I got 2 1.5 TB Samsung hard drives. I put them in as a RAID volume for redundancy. I was having issues with this however. It seemed that it would go to sleep or something and an app that needed to access it would hang and need to force quit. I then split the drives up into 2 drives and am using Time Machine (which ultimately is better for my needs). Well now I've noticed that these drives will disappear from the Finder. Sometimes I can see them, but they appear empty. Other times they will be there on boot up, then gone a few minutes later when I check my desktop. If I use a tool like System Profiler it can see the drives in there, but there is not any information after the Bay number.
I did upgrade to 10.6 after switching them from a RAID setup, but I can't say for sure it is a SL issue.
The solution is to reboot, but then the problem will eventually happen again. It is ONLY these two drives, both SAMSUNG HD154UI.

Surprised your concerns weren't addressed in some way in all this time...
Well, I guess the most obvious first, have you taken them out and put them in different bays? Used Disk Utility on them, preferably DiskWarrior? When you partitioned them, did you set them up as using GUID? And by now you've updated to 10.6.1?

Major trouble: hard drive disappeared

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