Repairing an external hard drive

I took my 500 gig hard drive out of my MBP and have been using it as an external drive (put it an external case). I dropped it while it was in operation about a foot onto a hard floor. The USB cable came out in the process. Now it will mount but I cannot see any of the files otherr than the original user folder I had left on it. It tells me that it still has 400 gig worth of info on it. Disk Utility and Disk Warrior (latest version of each) say they cannot repair it. Disk Utility says I can read files but that I cannot write to the disk. (Though no files appear other than the one folder.) TechTool Pro 4 doesn't see it at all. Any other utilities out there that might help me recover any data off it? It's not worth sending it to a special service as I fortunately have a backup of most of what is on it. Still, I'd like to recover what I can if possible.

Wait until you have a continous 75 hours, let it do it's thing and yes you will have to pay the $99 to get your files back.
Might as well pay that up front less you have issues and if it forgets (likely not), then it's another 75 hours.
Data Rescue is great, but it takes quite some time as it's reading the bits themselves directly off the drive and figuring out the file/restoring.
Why Apple doesn't do data recovery.
It's also faster (and safer) to restore to another blank drive, because one drive reads and the other writes.
If you restore to the same drive, then it's double duty on that drive, it can only read or write, not both at once.
Good Luck

Similar Messages

I need help to repair my external hard drive

(1) My External Hard Drive finally stopped working. Whenever I tried to use it, I would only get variants of, "Time Machine couldn't complete the Backup to "My Passport for Mac", or "The backup disc is not available".
(2) "No problem," I thought. "There is no problem with my computer, so I'll just buy another external hard drive," and I did.
(3) About this time, I partitioned my computer hard drive to enable me to run both Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion. I did this with step-by-step instructions by Apple technicians.
(4) I now find that I have lost a considerable number of files, including those that I value most highly.
(5) I now find that I need the files in my old, abandoned external hard drive, and it seems to me that the easiest way to access those files is simply to repair it.
(Here's what I've tried so far: (1) Disc Utility Repair. Didn't help. (2) COMMAND-R start. This produced a window with the following entries: Restore from Time Machine Backup, Reinstall OSX, Get Help online, Disk Utility. It seemed to offer hope, but I couldn't highlight any of them, and the "continue" command was dimned out. Where do I go from here? Data recovery is the solution usually offered, and I've alwys wondered why. It seems to me that fixing the external hard drive should always be the first thing to be considered. Data recovery is expensive, and fixing the external hard drive might be cheap.

baltwo wrote:
I don't think the HD's broken. More likely, since you used it for TM, that's what causing your issues. However, since I don't use TM or ever use WD's crappy HDs, all I can suggest is to peruse Pondini's TM FAQs for starters. Then, check out his troubleshooting steps.
What is "WD"?

Disk Utility cant repair my external hard drive?!

I'm using a 1 TB WD external hard drive on my Macbook Pro (OS is still Snow Leopard).
It was working just fine until a few days ago the hard drive does not show on finder. I tried to repair it with disk utility but it gave the following message
"Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files."
Of course I cant back up my files, it doesn't even show on finder! It doesn't show on other macs and PCs either!
I did my research on the internet and tried the following commands on Terminal
mount /dev/disk1
and it says "unknown special file or file system."
mount force /dev/disk1
and it says "/System/Library/Extensions/ufs.kext failed to load - (libkern/kext) not privileged; check the system/kernel logs for errors or try kextutil(8).
UFS filesystem is not available."
What does that mean??
I can reformat my hard drive but it has 500 GB worth of files and I'd rather not loose them if possible.. Is it possible?
I'm also trying to save my files using this software Disk Drill, but it takes forever and the showing files doesn't have the proper name.
Is there anything else I could try? I'll really appreciate any kind of help. Thanks!

Use a product such as DiskWarrior to repair the drive; you’re supposed to make backups to guard against future trouble and not while having it.
(108938)

Disk repair for external hard drive

Hi, I gave my son an external hard drive to back up his school work, besides the normal backups of on the Time Capsule. So how he managed to hget the external hard dirve disappear from the screen while there is no back up left on the TC.
I have tried disk utility an number of time on several computers to get the External hard drive working. No luck there. I have tried restore in disk utility, but I cannot get the source and destination righty for a reason.
I have read an advice of Francine Schwieder dating back to 2007 where she advised to run terminator, this is the result I get while the xternal hard drive was connected to my Imac.
Last login: Sun Oct 9 22:14:37 on ttys000
imac-chf-baak:~ charles2008$
Last login: Fri Dec 7 20:58:20 on console
iMac:~ charles2008$
iMac:~ charles2008$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            999.3 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                  Apple_HFS lucas hard drive        1.0 TB     disk1s1
iMac:~ charles2008$
Last login: Fri Dec 7 21:19:20 on ttys000
iMac:~ charles2008$
With my limited knowledge, was a partition placed on this external hard drive ? I cannot see or acces the external hard drive.
Is there anyone who can help me with this ?
Hope to hear from you.
Charles
Francine Schwieder Southern Cal

If you wan to give Data Rescue 3 a spin (I'm testing it out now for the first time) you can get it - and a number of other apps - for $50 from MacUpdate's December Bundle.
Because I have redundant backups, I've never used either DiskWarrior or Data Rescue 3 - but I wanted to try it so that I will be able to know how well it works (or doesn't).
Clinton

Unable to verify or repair my external hard drive with disk utility, reason being ...

Hello there,
I have been facing this problem: After I started getting an error 50 error while trying to view in Quicktime player a movie which I had exported from FCPX today, I found that I was not even able to trash the movie [this was a test movie used for export and I had no need for the same]. A little while later when I opened FCPX, I found this message pop up:
Got a little worried and then tried to verify and repair my hard drives using disk utility, but I could neither verify nor repair the disk. What should I do now?

Hello Klaus,
I think I have been able to overcome the problem/s.
I have been using my Seagate 2 TB drive [2 USB] with a FW adapter and was using FW connectivity for the past several months without any problems. About 2 months ago I added a 2 TB Lacie, FW, to my workflow and this EHD was daisychained to the Seagate. Had been facing no problem with this arrangement until today.
Now let me try to tell you what I had done:
I ejected the Seagate drive with the intention of reconnecting it again. But, no, when I tried to reconnect, this message came up:
After several attempts, I did this, connected the Lacie by FW to the FW port on the Mac and connected the Seagate by 2 USB. Was I glad to see my Seagate HD icons shining in all their glory on my desktop! I utilised the services of disk utility and was informed that these prodigal sons were absolutely fine.
I also tried to do this: empty the trash. Was I happy to hear the sound of files being cast out?
Well, well, at least I will be able to get some peaceful sleep now! I have not yet opened FCPX, but I trust it will also be reading the Seagate HD once again.
Good night and thanks for being helpful.

Can I REPAIR my External Hard Drive in Disk Utility without losing all of the Data?

So, here's the story...
A while back, I made the mistake of throwing my TM backups in the Trash folder. They were "stuck" there in my External Trash FOREVER until I finally decided to do something about it. I read a few forums that gave instructions on how to delete those volumes through Manually through a series of prompts in TERMINAL. This process actually WORKED and removed the files from the trash, HOWEVER, now the Disk isn't mounting properly. After running "Verify Disk" in Disk Utility, It's telling me that the disk needs to be repaired.
Fearing that my disk may be wiped completely, I thought I'd transfer all the files over to another HD and Repair the Problematic Disk just to be safe.
But When I try to copy the files over to another drive with ample space, it gives the message "The operation can’t be completed because the selection contains both backup items and non-backup items."
I am now at a cross roads, because I DO NOT WANT TO LOSE ALL OF THE DATA ON THIS DRIVE!!!! What do I do??

Hi,
If it is not mounting properly but you can "grab" something in an effort to Transfer it, what are you seeing ?
Can you limit it to different files/folders ?
Other than that I would try Carbon Copy Cloner (you can Try before your Buy sort of thing)
Use this to Create the Backup of the drive.
Then repair drive.
8:07 pm Wednesday; January 1, 2014
 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mavericks 10.9)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad

Disk utility keeps failing to repair my external hard drive?

My disk was working completely fine about two weeks ago, but today when I plugged it in to back up it didn't show on my finder. When I checked disc utility, it did though but when I clicked "verify", it said I had to "repair" it. So I tried, but it didn't work.
What should I do? It's obviously recognized by the computer, just not usable.

greenteafrappucinos wrote:
, it said I had to "repair" it. So I tried, but it didn't work.
If there was a message in red that said the HDD could not be repaired, then the disk should be replaced.
Ciao.

Repairing external hard drive

Im trying to repair my external hard drive but everytime i try it stops and says "error: live file system repair is not supported"

I have a 1 TeraByte external that no longer would work or backup from my Time Machine backups after the OS update to Maverick, it claimed the drive was full and could no longer do backups unless I erased it or made room on the drive. So I tried to use disk utilities and also got the error: live file system repair is not supported. Then only thing left to do was.
Press Cmd + R on boot and then choose Disk utility then reformate the external drive and then I got a working clean external drive. Then I rebooted and the drive was ready for a fresh backup with Time Machine which is working as I write this. A full backup will probably take 6-9 hours as I have close to 800 gigs to backup.
Hope this helps everyone here.
JP

Recovering files from external hard drive

My external hard drive stopped working. Everytime I tried to access it, I'd get one or more of the following messages: "Time Machine Error. The backup disc is not available. Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to "My Passport for Mac. The backup disc is not available. Your Time Machine backup disc can't be found."
That didn't cause me to worry, because my computer was in good working condition, so I just bought another external harddrive. However, I later discovered that I needed much of the information in the old external hard drive, because I had lost a great number of files from my computer. [I have to add that I partitioned my computer's harddrive about the same time under the step-by-step instructions of a second-level Apple technician.] Anyway, my problem now is to extract the files from my old external harddrive.
Data recovery is out. It's just too expensive. Ideally, I would just like to get my external hard drive working again. If that's not possible, I have to find another way, or just give up. Anyway, today I came to ask about Disc Warrior. I have read some reports that it can be used to do what I need done. Does anyone have any experience, successful experience, with it? Oh, I just discovered and downloaded StellarPhoenixMacData, but I haven't tried it yet.
Finally, judging by sound and vibration, my old external hard drive seems to be working. There is no clicking or other unusual sound, which I understand is a good sign.

Kappy wrote:
In any case if you connect the drive to your computer, then open Disk Utility, does the drive appear on your Desktop? If not, does it appear in DU's device list in the sidebar?
The new external hard drive appears in disc utility, but not the old external hard drive with which I'm having problems.
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive. Two free alternatives are Disk Drill and TestDisk. Look for them and demos at MacUpdate or CNET Downloads.
So, I guess you're saying that any of those you mention are better than Disc Warrior for my problem. Is that right?
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Okay, I have now disconnected the external hard drive. I hadn't realized that there was the possibility of overwriting files on the EXTERNAL hard drive.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.
Okay, I'll do that, but what about just repairing the external hard drive? Isn't that possible? I mean, couldn't it be something like a loose connection? However, I have certainly noticed that hard drive repair is not mentioned nearly as much as data recovery. There must be a reason for that.

Recovering files external hard drive

Wasn't sure where to post this. I haven't been on here for awhile, and I'm not used to the "new" structure.
My 1TB LaCie external hard drive - which had my Time Machine backups on it (multiple ones unfortunately) no longer mounts. I downloaded some file recovery software which can manage to find files, but not any file sorting information or names.
The first time I ran the software (it runs through Terminal), I let it go about 5.5 hours, and it had recovered approximately 1,100 folders worth of files, each folder holding 500 files (all named generically), and estimated that it had 66+ hours left to go. Most of the files (around 30,000) were txt files which were useless garbage. There were also many of the files I wanted (old photos & files from college), however, there is no chance I will ever have time to go through all the files it had at that point, let alone another 66+ hours worth.
I started recovery over, this time setting limitations on file types (no more txt files), as well as other files I know I don't need. Once again after the same amount of time, I'm in a similar situation. Less files, but lots of random pngs and crap from websites I don't even remember.
As far as I can tell, a LOT of these files have many many versions. I'm going to assume maybe from the multiple Time Machines? There are photos from when I went to college that were classmates pictures, that I don't remember ever having saved to my computer. There's what I can only imagine are cut up mangled files from the inner workings of Adobe CS3, and tons of crap from what I imagine must be old internet caching.
Anyway, I'm not sure what my question is, but I'm mostly wondering if anyone else has had a hard drive with their "Time Machine" backups on it fail. And if so, any advice for sorting out the mess of many duplicated files? Perhaps I would be better served to use different software...but this was free, and I already spent $92 on a new external hard drive to recover files to. However, if someone knows of a decent recovery program that might save me a bit of time, I suppose it would be worth it. It just seems most of them have no guarantees, and I don't want to shell out $100, just to be sitting in the same puddle of files.
Thanks!

Kappy wrote:
In any case if you connect the drive to your computer, then open Disk Utility, does the drive appear on your Desktop? If not, does it appear in DU's device list in the sidebar?
The new external hard drive appears in disc utility, but not the old external hard drive with which I'm having problems.
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive. Two free alternatives are Disk Drill and TestDisk. Look for them and demos at MacUpdate or CNET Downloads.
So, I guess you're saying that any of those you mention are better than Disc Warrior for my problem. Is that right?
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Okay, I have now disconnected the external hard drive. I hadn't realized that there was the possibility of overwriting files on the EXTERNAL hard drive.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.
Okay, I'll do that, but what about just repairing the external hard drive? Isn't that possible? I mean, couldn't it be something like a loose connection? However, I have certainly noticed that hard drive repair is not mentioned nearly as much as data recovery. There must be a reason for that.

Mac Update/External Hard Drive

Today I finally let my software updater do it's thing and it installed these 4 updates:
Quicktime (7.6.2)
Java for Mac OS X 10.4 Release 9 (1.0)
Itunes (8.2.0)
Security Update 2009-002 PowerPC (1.0)
I then rebooted and tried to plug in my Seagate External Hard Drive and I get a prompt that says:
DISK INSERTION
The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer.
What gives? It was working 10 minutes before... any ideas?
BiddyB

Hi BiddyB, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Could be many things, we should start with this...
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Tiger Install disc that came with your computer, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the hard drive icon to display the names of your hard disk volumes and partitions.
5. Select your Mac OS X volume.
6. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.
(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)
The usual reason why updates fail or mess things up, is if Permissions are not fixed before & after every update, with a reboot... you may get a partial update when the installer finds it doesn't have Permissions to change one obscure little part of the OS, leaving you with a mix of OS versions.
Some people get away without Repairing Permissions for years, some for only days.
If Permissions are wrong before applying an update, you could get mixed OS versions, if Directory is the slightest messed up, who knows!
If many Permission are repaired, or any Directory errors are found, you may need to re-apply some the latest/biggest updates.
May even need to do an Archive and Install if you have room on the HD, but saves all your files and gives a new OS...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120
I only use Software Update to see what is needed, then get them for real via...
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/
That way I can wait a week or so, check the forums for potential problems, and get Permissions & such in order before installing.
If all the above fails, then it appears to be time for a relatively painless Archive & Install, which gives you a new/old OS, but can preserve all your files, pics, music, settings, etc., as long as you have plenty of free disk space and no Disk corruption, and is relatively quick & painless...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120
Just be sure to select Preserve Users & Settings.
Then see if Disk Utility can see/repair the external Hard Drive.

MacBook freezing and crashing/running slow, problem with external hard drive

I've been having some issues for the past couple months with my laptop randomly freezing, usually when I have a lot happening. I've ended up having to hard-restart it several times because it will just hang and I can't get into the menu at all to force quit things. In the past couple days, it's now started crashing completely, although restarting okay. This last time, though, it crashed while I was trying to empty the trash and since then it's been crazy slow and not very responsive.I tried running disk utility and ccleaner, and although they repaired some stuff they didn't fix the problem.
I think iTunes might be the issue. I was trying to move my music library when this last thing started. I have it all on an external hard drive, and I was trying to move it from one folder to another. I tried repairing the external hard drive with disk utility to see if that was the issue, but now my files have all vanished and the external appears blank.
I also recently installed BootCamp, if that makes a difference.
I'm mostly just really unsure what to do. I don't want to do anything to the external because I need to recover the stuff that was on it, but I also need my laptop to be usable.

Thanks for the response. I tried booting in recovery mode and running disk utility again and that seemed to help. It's still hanging when I plug in the external hard drive but otherwise seems to be working okay. My main issue now is the invisible files. I tried booting in Windows, planning to install Recuva to try and get the files back. However, they show up fine there. This is a relief but I'm not totally sure what is happening. I'm guessing the disk has somehow mounted incorrectly on the mac portion but I'm not sure how to fix that. I'm about to restart on the other partition and see what's going on there.

External hard drive error / disk utility not repairing

I am having problems with a particular external hard drive. Device is a Transcend StoreJet 25M (640GB) currently formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled). It was previously formatted in FAT32, exFat, and also Mac OS Extended (Journaled). It started giving me problems when I used it to store all my music on it. My iTunes library and music files were all stored on it, and at one point iTunes started acting funny - it would play a song for a few seconds, pause, play for a further few seconds, pause again, and so forth. I decided to stop using it and when I shifted the iTunes library to the Mac internal hard drive and the music file into another external hard drive, iTunes worked fine. So I figured it must be a problem with the external hard drive itself.
I recently reformatted it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and transfered some data on to it (include a back up of the music folder). I noticed that Spotlight keeps trying to index the drive but never actually managed. Times indicated for indexing runs into days. The hard drive tends to be slow to load files expecially when there are multiple folders and tiers, and is generally unreliable. It occasionally unmounts, or when I try to unmount it I get an error saying it cannot unmount because it is being used (but no indication as to which app is using it even if all apps are closed except for Finder).
I tried repairing it using disk utility. The attached image shows the results. It seems that it can't be repaired by disk utility. At this point, and after much deliberation, I would have to questions:
1. Should I just smash the thing on the floor?
2. Is there another application I could try and repair it with?
3. Even though I have reformatted it several times, it keeps giving me the same problem. When I do a disk verification of the hard rive itself it all seems fine, however when I do a disk verification or repair of the volume I get the error shown in the image. Is this a problem being caused during formatting?
Any help would be much appreciated.

Oh, I forgot to attach image....
Message was edited by: TheSpoon

How do i repair or recover data from a corrupt USB external hard drive that does not show up on my Mac desktop or disk utility

How do i repair or recover data from a corrupt USB external hard drive that does not show up on my Mac desktop or disk utility?
Last night i was using my external hard drive, for some reason the folder just closed and i couldn't find it on my desktop.
After googling solutions, i found it in the disk utilities, i clicked on the 'repair' button many times, but it said the 'error...' message.
So i ejected it to try again, now when i connect the USB external hard drive it doesn't show up on my desktop or disk utilities.
I really just want to either repair or recover the data on it because it literally has everything (documents, work files, photos etc) on it,
I downloaded an application to recover my files but it needs the USB to at least show up.recognise it which mine doesn't.
I know i should've backed it up on another USB, this definitely teaches me for next time to back up all my files.
Are the files lost forever or can i recover them by going to a shop or using a software?

Thank you for responding.
This might sound stupid since i'm not really knowledgeable with Macs,
but since all my files were moved from my mac computer to the external hard drive,
is it possible to recover those files through my Mac - like recovering deleted files?

Disk utility can't repair disk (1 partition) on external hard drive

I've search here some to try to find the answer to my scenario, but I really don't understand how Disk Utility got involved in my external hard drive to begin with, so here's my question.
I have a 2TB Western Digital My Book Studio FW800 external that has 5 partitions, connected to my 2011 iMac. I had help doing the partitions and don't really remember the reasoning, but one is just for my SuperDuper! backup, one is Miscellaneous, one for movie clips off my camcorder, one for misc scanned photo's and one for my genealogy research.
I back up using Time Machine to a Time Capsule and also to this WD hard drive with SuperDuper!
Recently I'm getting a pop up message that "Mac OS X can't repair the disk "Genealogy"'. And it needs to be reformatted. It's become a read only disk. When I look in Disk Utility it shows all the partitions as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" EXCEPT for the one in question. I also noticed that there are a lot of files with "date created" being the same date in 1969! These files may be letters I've written or photo's I added to that partition within the last few years.
I think I have to completely reformat the entire external hard drive to repair this, but I want to make sure. Because it's going to be a major hassle backing it all up to another external (having to get one first) and then figuring out how to make the files that have turned "read only" in that one partition, back to their original state!
Does this sound right, that I have to reformat the entire external hard drive? And how do I get the read-only files back to their original state.
Thanks, Sandy

I don't back them up. There isn't much on them, besides the one I save video files too, but those are 2-3 min snippets of school events, that are just uploaded to youtube without any editing (like titles, fade ins, etc.) through iMovie. All those vid's are on original tapes I have.
The partition that is giving me problems, I do have most of that on my iMac's hard drive, just not as organized. I guess it's just seeming overwhelming to re-created those files into the same file structure on my iMac, but I think it could be done.
I'm still not sure why my brother had me do the partitions like this. In the past I had just two partitions, one for the back up and the other for random stuff that I didn't want to take up space on my iMac.

Repairing an external hard drive

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