Oops, I disconnected an external drive and now I can't backup.

I am backing up to an external firewire disk. I accidentally disconnected the external drive. I re-connected it and only two of my three partitions are visible now. I ran disk utility and repaired the disk with no errors. When I go to the finder only two of the three partitions can be seen.
When I backed up with time machine it said that it needs 13.97 GB but only 4.43 GB are available. I cleaned up the external drive but I get the same error. I went to /Volumes/Time Machine (my backup partition) and the files I had deleted were no longer there.
Any body have an idea of what is going on here?

Alan Spitz wrote:
I am backing up to an external firewire disk. I accidentally disconnected the external drive. I re-connected it and only two of my three partitions are visible now. I ran disk utility and repaired the disk with no errors. When I go to the finder only two of the three partitions can be seen.
When I backed up with time machine it said that it needs 13.97 GB but only 4.43 GB are available. I cleaned up the external drive
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
How did you do that? Did you delete TM backup files via the Finder? That's likely to be a large problem. Unfortunately Apple doesn't do a very good job of warning folks not to do that, other than using special "deny everybody everything" permissions. Do a +*Repair Disk+* (not permissions) on it again. That may not gain any space, but if DU can repair them successfully, you may be able to continue using them.
If Disk Utility sees it, but the Finder doesn't, it may just be that you need to reset your Finder preferences. From a Finder window's menubar, select Preferences then either General or Sidebar as appropriate, un-check the box for +External Disks,+ then check it again.
If you get the TM drive repaired, and still have the problem, post back. Include the size of the data on your internal HD, the capacity of your TM drive, and whether there's anything else on it besides TM backups. Also Click here to download the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window. Copy and post them here.

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No that is not a problem and no one has reported it here
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HT1364 If I already moved Itunes media folder to external drive and now music is not matching up in iTunes?

Dear Itunes Community~
This is my first time using glad you are here, but all the passwords!!
Question/Quandry:
If I already moved Itunes media folder to my external drive and now my music is not matching up in iTunes, what should I do? I have tried my solution !?, and now I have 17,000 songs, instead of 9,000!
Should I just uninstall Itunes, and then reinstall Itunes, and let it do it's thing, and then figure out how to move to the external hard drive later?
Help, I screwed it up all on my own!
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Thank you very much,
Doris =:o
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Good afternoon Lyssa,
Phew. First of all, thanks in advance...these blogs are always comforting help!
So, to answer your questions: For the age of the hard drive.Well, I added memory a couple of years ago (RAM and hard drive). Being a mom leads me to eat up a fair amount of gigs with photos of my kids and, in fact, I think I entirely replaced the original drive, so it is a couple years younger than 2008 since I did that in March 2010. If there is some way to verify that (whether or not I replaced the entire drive), I'm all ears. I have 311 Gigs free, so it is not a space issue. I verified the startup disk on Disk Utilityand nothing showed up.
Question 1- What formats...
The La Cie is format Windows NT Filesystem 3G ....At the time that I bought it I was still using a PC as well as a Mac and was told by afriend to use this format...
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Question 2. Other cables...
I used two other cables with the WD and that didn't change anything.
Question 3... Fire Wire from the La Cie
Yes, I used the Firewire cable from the La Cie and it is indeed present, though still not visible in Finder. Since it is not Mac OSExtended I know that I can't use Time Machine with it.
So, in summary...
I can plug in the La Cie and it is functional on the MacBook, visible on Disk Utility but not visible in Finder. The WD drive is not visible and not functional. So we can think it is indeed the WD that is not working.... Also, the iphone photos did, in the end, get downloaded, so it is not something more general.
Causes...
I forgot to mention that there is a "lost+found" file on the WD which apparently points to a UNIX /OS issue?
Some kind of "insurance"?....
I'm curious about how people avoid this kind of issue. You just regularly replace back-up drives and hard drives before problems come up? Time Machine is great and saves many of us from disasters, however, knowing that your Time Machine back-ups are vulnerable makes the whole system insecure. No way to have alarms ring before the drive goes out?
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It seems that I ought to be able to copy off of the WD to the MacBook then erase it and reformat it and start over again. However, I haven’t been able to see its contents except on random occasions. If you have any ideas on how to copy the Time Machineback-ups from the WD, again, I'm all ears!
Good afternoon Lyssa,
Phew. First of all, thanks in advance...
So, to answer your questions:
For the age of the hard drive. Well, I added memory a coupleof years ago (RAM and hard drive). Being a mom leads me to eat up a fair amountof gigs with photos of my kids ….and, in fact, I think I entirely replaced theoriginal drive, so it is a couple years younger than 2008 since I did that inMarch 2010. If there is some way to verify that, I'm all ears. I have 311 Gigfree, so it is not a space issue. I verified the startup disk on Disk Utilityand nothing showed up.
Question 1- What formats...
The La Cie is format Windows NT Filesystem 3G ....At thetime that I bought it I was still using a PC as well as a Mac and was told by afriend to use this format...
The WD is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I again tried torepair the WD last night and this is the error message: "Error: DiskUtility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible,reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files."
Also, Time Machine tried again to back-up and gave me thiserror: "Files can't be copied onto the backup disk because it appearsto be 'read only'. You may need to repair or reformat the disk using DiskUtility. If the disk can't be repaired, you must use a different disk forbackups. Open Time Machine preferences to select a different backup disk."
Question 2. Other cables...
I used two other cables with the WD and that didn't changeanything.
Question 3... Fire Wire from the La Cie
Yes, I used the Firewire cable from the La Cie and it isindeed accessible, though still not visible in Finder. Since it is not Mac OSExtended I know that I can't use Time Machine with it.
FYI...
So, in summary... I can plug in the La Cie and it is “functional” on theMacBook but not visible in Finder. The WD drive is not visible and notfunctional. So we can think it is indeed the WD that is not working.... ALSO,the iphone photos did, in the end get downloaded.
As for ways ahead…
It seems that I ought to be able to copy off of the WD tothe MacBook then erase it and reformat it and start over again. However, Ihaven’t been able to “see” its contents except on random occasions…
Any further thoughts are welcome!

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Moved itunes folder to external drive and now lost playlists

To free space on my hard drive, I moved the folder to my external drive. Now, I successfully can access my music library, but my playlists aren't listed and I can't figure out how to get them/point to them. Any ideas?
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polydorus, you are my hero. I launched itunes with the shift key down and was able to select the library on the external drive. I would not have thought of that. Thanks so much.
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thisisdavid wrote:
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