Opening an external drive

I have a computer repair business and one of my friends brought me an external drive that has a messed up USB interface. He wants me to open the drive up, remove the HDD and backup his data before sending the drive back to Toshiba for warranty replacement. They said that it would be fine if I did it over the phone, but I was hoping for some more varifiable infromtaion before I possibly void his warranty.

It may be possible to recover some of the data from it but no guarantees.Go to download .com and get a program called PC Inspector and install it on your internal drive.. This can sometimes recover deleted files. They are still there until written over so you may have a chance. Follow the instructions, it's quite easy to use. Good luck.

Similar Messages

  • Iphoto library won't open since external drive unplugged by mistake

    Hi,
    my photos are on an external drive, I had iphoto open on my laptop and my husband unplugged the hard drive - he didn't realise.
    now when I open the library it is registering no photos, even though the file is 10gb.
    is there any way that I can access the photos?
    my backups have been waylaid in a house move so currently if I lose this then I've lost all my photos......
    thanks for your help
    victoria

    Victoria
    Hold down the option (or alt) key key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and point it again at the Library on the external. If iPhoto sees a valid library there it will open it.
    If it doesn't see one then you have a damaged database.
    Try these in order - from best option on down...
    1. Do you have an up-to-date back up? If so, try copy the library6.iphoto file from the back up to the iPhoto Library (Right Click -> Show Package Contents) allowing it to overwrite the damaged file.
    2. Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your albums and keywords back.
    Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.
    3. If neither of these work then you'll need to create and populate a new library.
    To create and populate a new library:
    Note this will give you a working library with the same Events and pictures as before, however, you will lose your albums, keywords, modified versions, books, calendars etc.
    In the iPhoto Preferences -> Events Uncheck the box at 'Imported Items from the Finder'
    Move the iPhoto Library to the desktop
    Launch iPhoto. It will ask if you wish to create a new Library. Say Yes.
    Go into the iPhoto Library (Right Click -> Show Package Contents) on your desktop and find the Originals folder. From the Originals folder drag the individual Event Folders to the iPhoto Window and it will recreate them in the new library.
    When you're sure all is well you can delete the iPhoto Library on your desktop.
    In the future, in addition to your usual back up routine, you might like to make a copy of the library6.iPhoto file whenever you have made changes to the library as protection against database corruption.
    Regards
    TD

  • Files not previewing or opening from external drives

    Having some issues after updating my iMac to Mavericks this morning - some files stored on networked drives area not opening, I just get a message saying 'application cannot be found' whenever I open a PDF, JPEG, DOC, AI, PSD ....anything!
    The enclosed folders are all visable but the files will not open, either by double clicking on them, dragging onto the relevant application in my toolbar or going through the 'select an application to open this file' options. i get the same message. cover view or thumbnail view just shows blank paper icons.
    worked fine before the update but not any more...any ideas? mac was bought from new 4 months ago.

    I've seen a similar behaviour with an external drive. I was able to move any file I'd like into the trash but then it didn't show up in the trash bin in the dock. So I wasn't able to erase those files completely from the disk. I used the Midnight Commander (mc) within a terminal window with superuser rights (sudo mc) and found the deleted files in /Volumes/ExternalHD/.Trashes/501. The problem, I guess, was a wrong owner/group setting of the .Trashes folder on the external drive. I changed them to the same values as the .Trahses folder on my local drive and restarted the Finder. Since then everything is ok. Perhaps you can try the same, but no guarantee, that it will work! Do it on your own risk...!
    Before you start, you should remember the actual values of owner/group/permissions of the .Trashes folder, in case you have to go back to the current state, if the following doesn't help. Much better would be a backup of the .Trashes folder of your external HD. Here on my system the owner of .Trashes is "root", group is "staff" and the permissions are "d-wx-wx-wt". You can change the owner/group in the terminal with the command "sudo chown root:staff /Volumes/Your-External-HD/.Trashes" and the permissions with the command "sudo chmod 41333 /Volumes/Your-External-HD/.Trashes". "Your-External-HD" should be replaced by the name of your external drive and you will be asked for your login-password to execute the sudo command. To "activate" the new settings you have to restart the Finder: cmd+alt+esc => select "Finder" press "restart".
    Good luck!

  • Mac Book Pro Won't Open My External Drive

    I have a 200gb external drive. When I plug it into my fire wire 400, the macbook recognizes the drive, but when I try to open it, I get ye olde spinning color wheel that goes on until I turn off the drive. Any ideas?

    First, I will inform you that your nik is inappropriate. Please change it immediately. We're not prudes here on the Apple Discussions, but we do try to maintain a bit of decorum.
    Nevertheless, I will try to help you. There are several possible explanations for the behavior you are seeing. The most likely is that the volume on your external drive has suffered a disk error. Connect the drive and turn it on, then open Disk Utility, select the drive's volume on the left in the "First Aid" pane, and click on "Repair Disk." Let us know what, if any, errors it reports, and if it is able to successfully repair the volume.
    One of a several things might happen when you attempt to repair the volume. The best scenario for you is if it actually finds erors and is able to repair them; problem solved. It could find errors and not be able to repair them, in wich case you will need to either format the volume or use Disk Warrior to attempt further repairs. Even if Disk Warrior works, I would recommend backing up what you can after successful repairs, then reformatting the volume.
    Disk Utility might "freeze" when attempting to either unmount or repair the drive. In this case, circumstances point to a problem not with the volume, but with communication between your computer and the volume. This could be caused by incompatible firmware on the drive, or bad hardware in the drive. If it is a firmware issue, it can be resolved by downloading and installing updated firmware (if it exists) for the drive. Check the drive manufacturer's website.
    "Bad drive hardware" could be a bad enclosure "bridge" (Firewire to ATA), a bad ATA cable in the enclosure (I've experienced this problem myself in the past), or a bad drive inside the enclosure. Of these three problems, a bad cable would be the easiest to fix. Obviously, fixing it would involve opening the enclosure, but once opened it is a simple matter to replace the existing cable with a new one.
    Follow what instructions I have given, then use the additional info I have given to help you troubleshoot this problem. Good luck, and change that name(!!).
    Scott

  • Projects will not open from external drive

    I have been creating and saving my projects to an external drive for sometime now. When I tried to open it recently, it recognizes the Lacie but it will not recognize the projects. When you look on the Lacie it's self all of the files are there but when clicked on they still will not open.
    Please help I don't know what to do...

    Stanberry_mac wrote:
    Yes, I did select the external drive when I created the new projects and they were working up until yesterday.
    .. and on 'top level' of drive, there's a 'iMovie-Projects' folder containing your project?
    excluding some Voodoo: your project's name does NOT contain 'bad' characters as ; : / | \ . … ?

  • Final Cut Studio crashing upon opening whenever external drives are active

    Hello folks,
    I've gotten some great advice on this forum for a while now, through reading other posts. But now I'm hoping I can get some directly tailored advice, as I'm floundering a bit. Thanks in advance for your time, as I've tried to be as thorough as possible in my description of the problems and as-yet failed attempts at solutions.
    The project is a full length documentary, and I'm having repeated, regular problems with Final Cut 6.0.5 crashing when I try to open the application.
    Now, here are some of the details. FCP will open just fine, if the external hard drives that contain all the media for the project are NOT turned on. However, if the drives are turned on, Final Cut will begin to open, the white box with the application name, registration information, and whatnot will begin, and it will freeze up, hanging there until I force quit. When I force quit, and look at the report, the only information I can get out of it is that the cause is "hanging", though as I'm no expert on reading crash reports, I'm sure I'm missing a lot.
    Once I force quit, FCP will not entirely quit. It remains "open", in that I can't open the application again, and my FCP icon in the dock has the little white dot next to it (I'm OS 10.5.6). However, if I eject the drives (which I am sometimes allowed to do, other times I'm told that the drives are still in use by an application), then FCP does resolve its force-quit, and is entirely quit. I can reopen it again immediately afterward with no problem, assuming I haven't turned the drives back on. If I'm not able to eject the drives, then I have to restart.
    My workaround so far has been to open FCP without the drives being active, turn on the drives, and then open the project file I want. This works, but seems to be evidence of some serious problems. If I'm opening FCP, and I have the user preference of "open last project upon launch" switched off, why would the hard drives affect FCP? Is FCP trying to read the drives even though it doesn't need any media from them to open in a brand-new project file?
    Other issues that have arisen are occasional freezes while in FCP. I will have FCP open (using the workaround), playing fine, and suddenly a click somewhere in the timeline will lead to the spinning beachball. This happens most frequently if I am quickly changing clips, or if I have just brought another application to the foreground and then gone back to FCP. When this happens, and I force quit, once again FCP does not entirely quit, but has to have all the drives ejected to fully quit.
    About the drives themselves - I am using 4 GTech 1 TB drives, all of which spin up normally, though two of them are now over 2 years old.
    About the software - I reinstalled FCP, and the problems existed beforehand and afterwards. I may do it again.
    About the operating system - I archived and installed Leopard, I did not back everything up and zero the drive before installing Leopard.
    About the project files - All project files are under 75 MB, most are much smaller. Since it is a long-form piece with over 200 hours at this point, I've been creating multiple projects.
    About the render files - I've flushed them repeatedly.
    About corrupt files - I've looked through my capture bins and trashed any suspiciously small QuickTime files.
    About FCP preferences - I've used FCS Remover a couple times, and the problem reappears.
    About permissions - I've repaired permissions repeatedly, and the problem reappears.
    About the rest of the system - Compressor won't allow me to submit batches, but from what I understand that is an issue with Apple QMaster. Also, the problems with FCP were there before Compressor was not working. I just today had a problem with System Preferences crashing once it opened, but after deleting the plist for System Preferences it seems to be back up and running fine.
    Machine details:
    MacPro
    2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
    6 GB memory
    667 MHz processor speed
    FCP 6.0.5
    Thanks again!
    Daniel Littlewood
    Editor, Don't Think I've Forgotten <Edited by Host>

    Hi Michael,
    Thanks for your input on this. I went through several steps, including most of the ones you recommended, and came upon what seems to be the problem (knock on wood).
    My editing setup is one MacPro, 4 G-Raid drives, and one Sony DSR-11 digital video deck. After clearing up more space the G-Raid drives to bring them to about 10% free space, things seemed to be running smoother - there were less crashes within FCP. However, I was still getting crashes on opening FCP, at the same "splash screen" point (after all the AE Effects and Video Effects had loaded).
    Running Disk Utility on all drives showed no problems, and unfortunately I don't have DiskWarrior (though that may be an upcoming purchase).
    It wasn't until I went through your suggestion of starting FCP with the individual drives connected that I got somewhere. FCP would start up fine with one or even two drives connected, but not with three or four. Doing a little research on that brought me to two threads on Creative Cow about G-Raid drives and daisy-chaining:
    http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/176/856609
    http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/176/856570
    Once I put two of the drives onto the rear FireWire800 port, and two of the drives into the front FireWire800 port, with the DSR-11 still in the back FireWire 400 port, my problems disappeared. Huzzah! The G-Raid folks recommend no more than three FireWire devices connected at a time, and lightening the load on the FireWire port by uncoupling the four-drive long daisy-chain has immediately helped. Now, I'll keep an eye on it, and may potentially buy a PCI card if something goes wonky again, but I am very happy to have gotten things up and running again. Cheers!

  • ITunes upgrade, now won't open on external drive

    Hello, mac genii,
    I recently moved iTunes to my external hard drive.  It has worked well.  Just upgraded iTunes to 11.2.1 from a 10.? version.  Now iTunes won't open.  I have a 2009 13" macbook pro, using a western digital 1T ex. drive.  I moved iTunes using a method I learned in this forum (from Limnos), by moving the iTunes folder to the ex. drive, and holding the option key down while clicking the iTunes icon, choosing the ex. drive for the location of the library.  When I downloaded the upgrade, i had the ex. drive plugged in.  It appears as though it upgraded in both the ex drive and internally.  I tried doing the option + iTunes icon and nothing happened.  The iTunes folders are all still intact as far as I can tell.
    Any ideas or suggestions?

    My 8.1 will not start either. Starts to open the iTunes library, then I get the "quit unexpectedly" message.
    I still have iTunes 8.0.2. When I try to open it, same thing happens, even though that version always worked just fine.
    I have tried restarting. No luck.
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  • External Drive Disappeared!

    My external drive is no longer recognized by my MacBook Pro. The drive is a SimpleTech, and I've used it for 3 years, on prior iMac and present MacBook Pro. Recently, I opened the external drive, and as I clicked on folders, the files in the folders would disappear. I restarted the external drive and computer, and everything was restored and could be opened. Ordered a new backup external, but before I hooked it up and transfered data from old external drive, the external drive disappeared from screen. Now can't get computer to recognize the old external. I can plug new external drive into computer, and it works fine, recognized, and Time Machine is backing up to new external drive. Unfortunately iPhoto library, and some other photos are still on the old external drive.
    Armando

    Armando,
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  • Files not showing up on external Drive

    I'm having this really strange and irritating issue with my external hard drive in 10.5.
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    I was using this drive in Tiger with no issues, it's HFS+ formatted and I've tried running Verify/Repair in Disk Utility to no avail.
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    I have a customer also reporting this same issue with files copied to an external RAID not showing up in Finder, since the 10.5.2 update / Leopard Graphics 1.0 updates. Zapping PRAM fixed the problem temporarily but after a day it's come back. [This is only one of four identical iMacs updated in the same manner that is showing the problem].

  • I have exported my bookmarks to an external drive. I want to import them back and they dont show when i click import..

    When i click import, then open external hard drive the bookmarks dont show. If i open the external drive via 'start/computer' i can see them in it ok,.

    Yes, that is a JSON backup, so you need to remove the .html file extension and add a .json file extension instead.<br />
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  • Checking to see if iPhoto images transferred to external drive worked

    I have decided to copy photos from my iPhoto '09 Library to an external Seagate harddrive. I want to still keep the originals on my MacBook Pro, but I am looking at downloading Lightroom 5 and starting to use it from 2014 going forward, instead of using iPhoto. Before I start working in a new program, I want to be sure all my images are backed up using a program I can operate.  I double-clicked on my home folder and then the Pictures folder to open the iPhoto library.  I right clicked on the file iPhoto Library, hit copy and then opened my Seagate external drive and hit paste. It took about 3 hours to copy and when I hit "get info" on the folder within the Seagate external drive, I see the same number of GBs of information as is in my iPhoto Library on my harddrive.
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    I only want to use this external drive as a back up, not to be a default library. I still want to keep the default on my MacBook Pro. I only want to open the external drive to make sure that my photos have all been copied and are being stored there.
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  • Why won't photos from external drive stay on my computer (iPhoto) once I disconnect the external drive?

    I'm trying to move photos from my external drive to my new computer.  When I connect the external drive, I'm able to view all the photos in iPhoto, and I'm able to drag photos to a desktop folder and/or directly into iPhoto.  But, when I disconnect the external drive, I no longer have access to the photos on my computer.  I'm sure there's a step I may be overlooking but I'm using the same process I've used in the past and cannot determine next steps.

    Thanks so far.
    I'm currently working on a 2012 MacBook Air 13", running OSX 10.8.
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  • Setting up Time Machine to use an external drive attached to another mac

    I have an external drive connected to an iMac G5 (OS X 10.5.6) that is used by Time Machine on that mac. I would like to set up Time Machine on my MacBook Pro (also OS X 10.5.6) to back up to that same drive. File sharing is enabled on the iMac but I can't seen to mount just the iMac's the external drive. Rather, the MacBook Pro mounts the entire iMac file system --- it shows up as "brian.imac" under the 'shared' heading of the finder window; the iMac's individual volumes show up as folders. Time Machine doesn't seem to recognize these as allowable destinations. What am I doing wrong?

    Brian Curtiss wrote:
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    With the iMac's external drive's finder window (on the MacBook Pro) still open, clicking "Choose Backup Disk..." in the "Time Machine" system preferences window brings up an empty list. How do I get Time Machine to recognize the iMac's external drive as a valid choice?

  • My finder crashes when I try to open my external hard drive

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    Try booting into the Safe Mode using your normal account.  Disconnect all peripherals except those needed for the test. Shut down the computer and then power it back up. Immediately after hearing the startup chime, hold down the shift key and continue to hold it until the gray Apple icon and a progress bar appear. The boot up is significantly slower than normal. This will reset some caches, forces a directory check, and disables all startup and login items, among other things. When you reboot normally, the initial reboot may be slower than normal. If the system operates normally, there may be 3rd party applications which are causing a problem. Try deleting/disabling the third party applications after a restart by using the application un-installer. For each disable/delete, you will need to restart if you don't do them all at once.
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  • Itunes on external drive will not open - error message 13014

    I have never posted a question here before - just kind of been stumbling my way around the forums looking for answers, which has usually worked for me - until today.  About a year ago, I moved my itunes (music and movies) to an external drive to free up space on my imac - following instructions in one of these forums.  It has been working with very few issues until today.  Suddenly, I am unable to open itunes.  I get the error message 13014. I have tried restarting (several times) and updating itunes with no luck.  I am at a complete loss.  I am afraid if someone asks how exactly I moved my itunes library, I won't be able to answer that.  Until today, I've been opening up my itunes by holding down the option key while opening itunes, and it has worked just fine, but now I am faced with this error message and no itunes.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    Try this discussion...
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