My external HD does not mount despite it appears on Disk Utility

I have been using an external HD to keep my video library. Just this week I updated my library and everything was OK, but when I tried to see the videos on my mediaplayer the disk didn't appear. I connected it again to my iMac but now the external HD does not mount. I tried Disk Utility, the disk appear gray on the sidebar but it doesn't mount. I run Repair but I get the b-tree node size error and the disk still does not mount.
Please help!!!!

If DiskWarrior can't fix it, you might try Data Rescue II...
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
(Has a Free Demo to see if it could or not, but you'll need another drive to recover to).
Or FileSalvage...
http://www.subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?%20mainpage=product_info&productsid=1
to recover what you can.

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External Drive does not mount with Firewire but is ok with USB !

Since 10.4.4 my external drive is no more recognized using firewire, but it mounts perfectly with USB
Using FW request me to reinitialize the disk, but then, the apple disk utility it is unable to reformat!
then I unplug FW , sets USB and everything is ok!
I connected the drive to my old IMac G4 700 and evrything is fine, FW and USB, using the same drive, using the same cable. I did repeat the test many times it is always ok with the old mac and it never mounts with FW on my newer Ibook.
I did reset the openfirmware but that was not successfull!
Then I brought both iBook and the faulty Drive to a friend (he owns a powerbook and also an external drive)
we verified that my drive does not mount on his powerbook G4 12" using FW and is ok with USB.
Then he tried his external drive and was very surprised to find the same fault with his drive and his PB using FW. (as for me everything is ok with USB!)
We are both very puzzled, our drives did work well before, (before 10.4.4 , and 10.4.5 did not improve!)
and now, with firewire,disks never mounts..
In addition I tried with the same cable to alternatively start, using the target mode, the ibook and the imac. For each test they were both recognized as external drives as they should..
So to try to sum up
- Disk mount ok with USB (1 or 2)
- Disk is no more recoknized with FW (but it was before with the exact same hadrware)
- FW Cable seems to be ok as targuet mode works properly
has anybody any idee?
It would be very munch appreciated..
thanks a lot for having read this long post..
External hard drive P/N:
the western digit disk 160G is in an enclosure referenced
Prolific PL3507 Combo Device
I tried to exchange the disk of this box with an old maxtor with the same bad result!
IbookG4 1.2 & IMac G4 700 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Hi Andre, I can't remember except to say that it was mounting fine with tiger and I was able to copy files to it for backup purposes.
I just hooked it up to a PC and windows tells me the drive is not formatted. That's not a good sign, and this was stupid: I think I had the drive hooked up to my Mac Pro during the upgrade.
Idiotic, granted. But this was an upgrade, not a full install and I maybe was trusting in Apple's ability not to do extraneous stuff during an install like windows does. Oh well...
I appreciate any further ideas. Many Thanks, Frank.

External Drive does not mount on desktop

Hi,
I did a Leopard upgrade and most everything went smoothly. But when I boot, Leopard pops up a window telling me that a disk I inserted is unreadable (it took me a time or two to realize it WAS referring to my USB 2.0 external hard drive).
It gives me the option to ignore, initialize or eject. Thus my hard drive won't mount on my desktop. It DOES show up in Disk Utility, however, so maybe there is hope.
So what are my options? Am I looking at burning DVDs all day so I can re-initialize or reformat this drive for Leopard?
I appreciate any help, and I did a lot of searching on this topic, so I'm aware that there may not be any solutions as of yet.
Many Thanks, Frank B.

Hi Andre, I can't remember except to say that it was mounting fine with tiger and I was able to copy files to it for backup purposes.
I just hooked it up to a PC and windows tells me the drive is not formatted. That's not a good sign, and this was stupid: I think I had the drive hooked up to my Mac Pro during the upgrade.
Idiotic, granted. But this was an upgrade, not a full install and I maybe was trusting in Apple's ability not to do extraneous stuff during an install like windows does. Oh well...
I appreciate any further ideas. Many Thanks, Frank.

LaCie external HD does not mount after lion 10.7.2 upgrade

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My Lacie ethernet mini is not working after Lion upgrade.
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I wish there was a way to wipe it clean and use it without the login software, but they couldn't suggest a way.
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External drive does not mount on boot

I have a Toshiba MK5055GSX 500GB external drive which I use for Time Machine but for some reason it does not automatically mount from a cold boot. Before I started to use it for Time Machine (it was formatted as NTFS at the time) I had not problems with it. All other external drives correctly mount on boot.
I had thought it might be a problem with the drive itself but if I disconnect it and reconnect it with my iMac running it mounts every time without fail. If I reboot after it has mounted it also mounts at boot. Only if I start the iMac using the power button with the drive already connected does it fail to mount and the results are consistently repeatable.
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Does this drive have a separate power brick? If it does I suggest using it to see if that fixes the problem. If the enclosure has both USB and Firewire ports try using the drive on a Firewire port instead of a USB port.
It sounds like the drive is not spinning up early enough in the startup process to be detected.
Not knowing how you prepared the drive for the Mac, you should re-prep the drive as follows:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
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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.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

External MyBook does not mount

Hi all-- a tore open my WD MyBook to replace the internal disk, and after piecing it back together, it no longer mounts in Finder. Disk Utility is also blind to it-- in fact the only thing that will see it at all is System Profiler.
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I have read elsewhere that the FW 800 port on the iMac 24 can be a bit tricky. You may want to make sure you have a good connection.
I formatted mine out of the box which is just good practice and because I wanted to make a partition bootable/clone.
Powering on/off wont make a difference.
I don't know what you mean by uncheck/check ports for firewire. There are no such prefs in OSX.
Repairing permissions has nothing to do with hardware.
You only plug the FW 800 plug into the FW 800 port on the iMac. You use the other ports on the drive to plug other drives in on a daisy chain.
Go into drive utility and see if it shows up there for formatting. If not, then you have a bad cable. Try the regular FW 400 port and hook up that way. The 400 and 800 share the same bridge. If that doesn't work, and another drive does, then the FW bus on the drive is dead.

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Samsung 320GB SATA drive inside a Navigator 3.5" enclosure shows up in system profiler but not on desktop. Disk utility reconises it as 298.1GB OEM but 'verify disk' greyed out.

Can you reformat it using Disk Utility's Erase tab?

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I had pulled the Barracudas out of their enclosures because there was no ventilation and they were overheating (Tech Support denied that but the SMART record showed they were). It's possible that yours was cooking for so long that it is now indeed fried, which would explain why it didn't work in its original enclosure any more either.

Ext. Drive will not mount however it shows in Disk Utility?

Ext. Drive will not show on the desktop nor will it mount however, it shows up in Disk Utility but...
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The disk directory is corrupt and can't be repaired by Disk Utility, or the drive has failed. You could remove the drive mechanism from the enclosure and install it in another one, or in a drive dock. If the mechanism is intact, you may be able to recover your backups that way.

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Macintosh:~ matthewjavier$ cd /Volumes
Macintosh:Volumes matthewjavier$ ls -l
total 8
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 Feb 11 07:56 Macintosh HD -> /
d---r-xr-x 21 matthewjavier matthewjavier 782 Feb 11 18:44 Matt's Extra Brain Storage External
drwxrwxrwx 3 matthewjavier admin 102 Feb 2 2007 Matt's iPhoto & iTunes
drwxrwxrwx 3 matthewjavier admin 102 Apr 8 2007 Matt's iPhoto & iTunes 1
drwxrwxrwx 3 matthewjavier admin 102 May 13 2007 Matt's iPhoto & iTunes 2
drwxr-xr-x 3 matthewjavier admin 102 Dec 8 2006 mattstaycalm
Macintosh:Volumes matthewjavier$

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I just picked up a used and battered G3 300 running OS 9.0
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That laCie drive is suffocating!
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Sure, it isn't as portable, but with 4GB flash drives going for 20 bucks, it'll only be a short while before you could just flash it up.

External HD does not mount

Hi,
I am using an iOmega FW800 & Lacie USB 100GB portable external HD's.
Both these drives don't mount after the combo update. Is there anything I can do to overcome this?
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Best Regards,
Aditya

Dear all,
Ive been hunting through the Support DIscussions and some kind soul has actually provided an answer (YAAAYYY!) which I have followed and it worked!
Follow the relevant instructions on the linked thread below:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=2087835
Couple of notes for those who aren't technically minded (like me)
1. Read the instructions carefully.
2. Once you have typed in the command into TERMINAL and pressed RETURN, it looks like nothing has happened. You will need to LOG OUT or restart your mac for the command to take effect. My Hard Drives power was ON when I restarted, and once I had, it mounted on the desktop just fine.
Hurrah!

I just updated to Mavericks and now I can't get my toshiba external HD to show up. It appears in Disk Utility but not in my finder. In Disk Utility it is grayed out and will not allow me to mount. Ive verified and repaired it. Nothing!

I cant take it anymore. Pleae someone help me. I cannot erase my HD becasue it has all of my pics for my kids and all of my movies school work. I need this fixed please

Hi Liz,
Sorry to hear you are having a similar problem. Last night I went to the tool bar at the top of iphoto, clicked on "File", then clicked "Browse Backups" in the drop down menu.    I have an external hard drive that is set up to Time Machine.   The Browse Backups opened the iphoto pages in the Time Machine. I selected a date one day ahead of the day I performed the now infamous update, and it showed my iphoto library as it had existed that day.   I then clicked "Restore Library" at the bottom right corner of the Time Machine screen.   Roughly 2 hours later my iphoto was back to normal.   When I opened iphoto there was a message saying I need to upgrade my program to be compatible with the new version of iphoto(version 9.2.1). I clicked "Upgrade" and within seconds it had done whatever upgrading it needed to do.
The only glitch in the restoration was that it restored the library as it appeared last week, so I no longer had photos I had imported this past weekend.   I simply went back to the Browse Backups in the drop down menu, when Time Machine opened I selected the page showing my pictures from this weekend and again said to Restore Library.   Roughly 45 minutes later the library was restored including the most recent photos.
I am now a happy camper.
I don't know if any of this will be of help to you because your email says you are having trouble with photos imported after the upgrade was performed.   Have you had any pop up notices when you first open iphoto, that tell you you need an upgrade to be compatible with the new iphoto?     If so have you clicked "upgrade"?
Good luck Liz, if you have Time Machine running as a back up to your library, maybe you wil be able to get help there, by following my instructions above.   Otherwise,   good luck with your investigations.   I'd be interested in hearing how you make out.
Karen

2 different brand USB external hard drives not mounting- Firewire ok

Hi, first timer here so apologies in advance.
i have to different brand external hard disks and they both show up fine with a firewire connection. the trouble is that i need to use the usb connection and neither show up. (shows up in system profiler though but not disk utility.) why USB if i can use Firewire? I will be using the disk to connect to a Wii console via usb port and the Wii is not recognizing either disk either?
Any ideas on how to get one of these disks to mount by USB?
cables are fine as work with USB only hard disks.
Thanks in advance

Hello Bob,
Thanks for your reply.
Unfortunately it does not show up at all in "disk utility". But appears in System Profiler under USB. This is true of 2 different external hard drives that mount fine with the firewire cables. One is a 3.5 inch and the other is a 2.5 inch portable. The USB cable is not faulty as tested it with another USB peripheral. Now a big believer in coincidences. Am i doing something wrong?
any other thoughts?
thanks again

My external HD does not mount despite it appears on Disk Utility

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