Replacement Hard Drive does not appear in Disk Utility.

I've replaced the defective HDD in my MBP(A1278) with a 500GB Western Digital one after it failed the Hard Drive test in AST. The old drive is detected internally without issue but the new one does not show up in disk utitlity. I have reformatted to use a GUID table and have made sure it's partition is OSX Journaled. It doesn't show up at all. I proceeded to do an install using a USB drive adapter and the OS installed just fine(same drive), when I put it back in the MBP it still doesn't detect. I would suspect the cable but the old drive shows up and runs diagnostic just fine(fails). I've actually gone ahead and tried three other new drives(2 seagates(500GB, 1TB XT) and 1 500GB HGST) and none of them detect, only the original. Am I missing some sort of firmware update or is there a limited physical issue?
All help would be appreciated, genius bar isn't an option, the closest one is 400km away.

Until you replace the cable you won't know for sure. Do you have a SATA to USB adapter to connec these other drive to and to connect your original drive to? If you do connect the original drive and do a Verify Disk in Disk Utility. If it comes back OK, no repair needed or even if a repair is need that succeeds, your original drive is OK and it is the cable that is causing all the problems.
I suggest you stay away from WD drives. They don't have a good track record with Mac computers.

Similar Messages

Internal hard drive does not mount in disk utility

My internal hard drive no longer mounts in Disk Utility. It is grayed out. I have extraordinarily frequent spinning beach ball/freezes, in Safari or Apple Mail. The most recent symptom: upon rebooting or just starting up, I see flashing black on the display. This has been occuring for more than six months. Of course, I have made total and frequent backup's. I bought new RAM, but have not yet installed it, and I susect this might help. I have done repeted troubleshooting many times each: Apple's Disk Doctor, Repaired Permissions, Reinstalled the Mac OS, safe boot, Alsoft's Disk Warrior, Apple's longer Harware Test, etc. I have worked as a new user, too. All tests done report that all is well. What od you thnk the problem is? Must I drive 1.5 hrs. each way to the Genius Bar at my nearest Apple Store? Might I try to erase the hard drive as a fix? I hate to do this, only as a last resort, as it is so time-consuming. Should I just update my Mac OS? Please advise, out there, if anyone can offer any advice, I would be greatly appreciative.

The list of issues you posted probably would not get shorter if you attempt to 'upgrade them' away, as usually that kind of effort is not effective yet may expose more of the same problems while not necessarily revealing the original weakness. Another OS X installed over a set of problems seldom helps.
How full is the hard disk drive? If it is too full, or has been very busy in use several years, it may be time to replace the HDD and perhaps put a larger capacity one in the computer. And if the main computer hardware checks out OK (tested under a variety of duration and stress tests) then also consider a RAM upgrade if the device is not already at the maximum capacity.
When was the last time the hard disk drive was devoid of content, maybe wiped -- erased and reformatted by a third party disk utility or have a utility overwrite the entire HDD with zeros? This used to be a common tech service in the course of a major effort to restore a Mac. Or Defragment?
If you can do the latter, this could help resolve bad sectors and remove old data or corruption on the hard drive. Or get a new HDD and before committing a new OS X install & apps to it (or a re-clone of a complete backup) test the drive and be sure it is ready for use. Not all new drives are perfectly ready; some need to get exercise first.
I'd bet on a new hard disk drive of larger capacity (also note spin RPM rate and data speeds) and a full RAM upgrade.
If you have a backup clone on an external hard disk drive (in a boot-capable enclosure) you could really go to town and before you erase the main/only hard drive, make a backup clone and test its ability to boot the Mac. Or put the old drive and content in a suitable boot capable enclosure of the kind with its own power supply, and deal with it later.
Then consider a later version OS X -- whatever most recent version that model can support... {edited}
Good luck & happy computing!

HT201250 i have plugged in a hard drive into my macbook, opened time machine, but my hard drive does not appear. why?

i have plugged in a hard drive into my macbook, opened time machine, but my hard drive does not appear. why?

Look in the Utility folder which is located inside the Applications folder.
You don't want to do anything with the disk on a PC if you want it to work on the Mac. They both use different formats.
Allan

Finder & Dock do not work - Mac Hard Drive does not appear on Desktop

Until yesterday, my powerbook was working properly.
This morning, I wanted to use it and I had the following problems after login.
1/ My Mac Hard drive does not appear on my dekstop
2/ My dock appears but no icon works when I click on them. So, I can't open finder. I have no response.
3/ Furthermore, my top bar (with clock, login name, Airport icon...) appears but it is frozed.
I try several solutions as :
- rebooting in safe mode,
- rebooting, with in the same time, hold different keys (option, apple, p & R)...
As of today, no solution works.
Thanks for your help.

A.CHAMP wrote:
Nota: if i used my daugther login (she is not admin), I have the same issues.
Ok, that's good enough. You may be able to repair this with the 10.5.8 Combo Update This is a fuller install, as opposed to an incremental "delta" update so it should overwrite any files that are damaged or missing. It does not matter if you have applied it before.
Remember to Verify Disk before update and repair permissions after update from /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.
EDIT:
I have around 5 Go space left on my Mac
Also, your getting very low on disk space. Try to copy some of the data off to other media. *Do it before you try applying the combo, you'll need the space.*
-mj
Message was edited by: macjack
Message was edited by: macjack

Hard drive does not appear on the Desktop

Hard drive does not appear on desktop. Can only be found in the applications folder.

Go to Finder -> Preferences, click the General icon, make sure the appropriate box is checked.

Internal hard drives won't appear in Disk Util

I have a bizarre problem with my hard drives now. I'm on a 2.4GHz Core2Duo Macbook Pro 15" with 10.5.4. I've switched the hard drive a couple of times before with no issues whatsoever. Now, with the exception of the brand new one that won't hold an install, my internal hard drives don't show up in the install disk's Disk Utility.
I got a new hard drive to try the other day, installed it, booted to my OSX install disk to use Disk Utility. I switched the new disk to GUID and formatted it as journaled like usual. It took 4 hours to do the install, then after the restart it tanked. It booted back to the install disk where I checked it out. It could not repair the file system, and the drive was not "mounted". I mounted it, repartitioned and formatted it, and installed again. This time it stopped halfway through the installation and said the drive might be corrupt.
I unplugged the cable and battery, held the power button for over 5 secs, then just let it sit for about 10minutes with no power source while I thought about this. I put the original drive back in, booted into OSX, and put the new hard drive in an external USB enclosure. I formatted it while in OSX, then rebooted into the install disk and installed OSX on it while it was in the USB case. It took the installation more quickly (about an hour and a half...still not 20min like my old 7200rpm Hitachi 200g), then I booted into its OSX while in the USB drive. It booted ok, so I downloaded the updates and clicked to install them. It then went into a revolving restart. Eventually I decided it was not doing this because it was happy so I shut it off.
I swapped the hard drive out with another new one, and this one would not complete an installation while inside the computer either. It acted similarly while in the USB case. HOWEVER it would always show up as unmounted after a restart and would not recognize the drive inside the computer as a bootable disk.
I put my original drive in there to give up, and it gave me the ? folder. I booted to the install disk and it did not show up in the disk utility. I put my old hard drive in the USB case, booted to the install disk, and it showed that it was there, but unmounted and it could not repair the file system.
I repartitioned my hard drive (i have time machine working..not a huge setback) in the USB case and put it back in the computer. It still would not show up in disk utility. I put it back in the USB case, installed OSX onto it (in about 20min), restarted a couple times, saw that it was working, put it into my computer, and got the ? folder again.
I went out and bought a stardard 160GB SATA 5400rpm Seagate drive to try in there, and this fresh drive is not recognized inside the computer either when I boot into disk utility.
The brand new hard drive WILL show up in Disk Utility when I boot to it from the install disk, but it will not survive a complete installation.
So now I'm running OSX from my original hard drive in a USB case until I can figure out why the old disk recognized inside my laptop is the new hard drive upgrade, but it cannot complete an installation on it.
I'm originally a Windows slave, so I can only think in terms of AHCI or SATA-card drivers, or screwed up bios. But this is all pre-os-boot, and the apple firmware seems to be pretty automatic in picking the right settings to see stuff.

I kind of feel like drawing a flowchart to show all that I've tried. Its difficult to keep everything intelligible while listing the entire last week's efforts at 2:45am. :-/
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41951
I also explained it here, perhaps a bit differently. Maybe some reply there might spark someone's memory of a possible problem. I understand the nature of computers (been 100% geek for 20 years), but I'm hoping there's someone out there with the specific Apple expertise to help me out. Eventually the processes I've taken and my specific situation will become clearer as the questions widdle away at this.
My original 7200rpm SATA drive that works fine won't show up when connected to the SATA cable. I've repartitioned it with HFS, and repartitioned it as free space in the USB enclosure. It simply won't show up in Disk Util. Same with the brand new test SATA drive.
The new SSD SATAII does show up, but after a 4hr install the partition is unmounted and won't show up as a boot option. I can boot to the install disk and repartition it, reinstall, or remount it. But it will never be mounted to be booted from while connected to the computer. I've had 2 of the SSD's to try, one survived one restart, then went into a never-ending restart cycle after I installed the updates. The 2nd has never successfully been mounted after the install to boot from. Now nothing can be mounted to boot from within the computer. I have to boot off of any of these drives from the USB enclosure.
If I install OSX on them while in the USB enclosure, that works, but they will not mount when connected to the SATA cable inside the lappy. The platter style SATA drives won't even be recognized...
Thanks for the instant reply, this is driving me nuts 'cuz it makes almost no sense. Thanks so much to everyone that contributes. I appreciate everything.

Canvio External Hard Drive does not appear in MY COMPUTER

Sorry if the subject is in wrong section of the forum.
I bought an External Hard Drive to use with my Windows 7 laptop. When connecting, sounds like a new device is connected, also appears listed in DEVICES & PRINTERS, but does not appear in MY COMPUTER, becoming impossible to access it anyhow.
Procedures about how to format or change device letter (in DISK MANAGEMENT), although the device has been also shown there, haven't work.
"Drivers" are listed as updated.
Any suggestions?
Thanks!

Jerry, thanks for trying to help.
I download the KillDisk as your adviced.
The Hardware appears there like:
Hard Disk 2 (82h) TOSHIBA External USB 3.0 - [DEVICE IS NOT READY]
Local Disk (2 - [DRIVE IS NOT READY]
Available actions for each are: Mark / Unmark / Refresh.
Any possibility of it is broken, or something?

External firewire hard drive does not appear on desktop

I have an iMac intel running OS 10.8.1. All of a suddden my firewire external hard drive no longer appears. System profiler does not
recognize it as well. My macbook recognizes it. Rebuilt directory with discwarrior but still no resolution. Any thoughts?

Does it have its own power supply? Try a
SMC RESET
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
Shut down the computer.
Unplug the computer's power cord and ALL peripherals.
Wait 15 seconds.
Attach the computers power cable.
Wait another 5 seconds and press the power button to turn on the computer.
The 5 second timing is important to a successful reset.

External Hard Drive does not appear in finder

We purchased a 1 TB G Drive Q from the Apple Store. It is connected to my wife's iMac running the most current update of Leopard by 800 firewire and appears on her desktop and works flawlessly with time machine. I am connected to the same drive intermittently with my MacBookPro also running the most current update of Leopard. i connect with 400 firewire. Initially the drive would not appear in the finder. for the initial backup, i turned the hard drive off and on and then it would appear and i did the backup but now when i connect to the 400 firewire port, it still doesn't appear in the finder. i would much prefer not to need to turn my back up drive off and on each time i want to use time machine. i should also mention that when i connect any of my garmin training devices or my power meter by USB it is recognized very quickly as a device in finder. any ideas? i understand this may be one of the problems fixed with SnowLeopard. thanks.

I am not sure what you are attempting to do. I assume that you are not trying to connect two computers to the same external drive at the same time. That will definitely be problematic. In order to effectively use Time Machine with two Macs, you should partition the drive into two partitions. Also make sure that the drive is using a GUID partition scheme.
bd

My internal hard drives don't appear in disk utility. Can't install os X

Hi,
I have a macpro. In this computer are 4 1TB hard drives. They were set up as a raid set. I booted my comp with a snow leopard install disk and opened raid utility to delete the raid set so I can install os X on one hard drive and use the other hard drives to store files. After deleting the raid set, I opened disk utility to find no disks in which I can reformat or even install snow leopard. What steps do I take now to ensure all disks are useable and that I can install my operating system on one of them?

Drive Preparation
1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, 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.
Now if you wish you can repeat Steps 2 and 3 on the other three drives. Or you can do it after installing OS X.
Once you have one drive reformatted you can quit DU and install OS X.

Encrypted HDD does not appear in Disk Utility or Finder or Terminal

I recently reformatted a 320 GB external HDD as Encyrpted, Journaled HFS+ using Mountain Lion. For several weeks, it worked flawlessly. I was able to back up financial documents with the security of disk-level encryption. When connected, the drive would mount and prompt for password (as expected).
Then one day I knocked against my desk while the drive was connected, pulling the FireWire cable out of the external HDD. It lost power and disconnected, causing the error message about disconnecting disks before ejecting them.
I immediately plugged it in and attempted to find it. Unfortunately, it didn't appear in Finder. It didn't appear in Disk Utility. It didn't appear in /Volumes or on diskutil list. I haven't been able to get it since then.
I have:
A) Restarted with HDD attached
B) Restarted without HDD attached
C) Connected with a different FireWire cable, then tried connecting with a USB cable
C) Run "Repair Disk" on my main internal HD while in Recovery Mode, without and then with HDD attached
D) Tried connecting to other Macs, using combinations of Lion and Mountain Lion, FireWire and USB
Does anyone have any additional tricks to try? The data is backed up, so it's ok if I lose it. But I would love to unbrick this drive that I purchased before considering it useless.

Apple Support article:
USB and FireWire Troubleshooting
Firewire Device not Working

My external hard drive does not appear.

So I have a 500 GB USB 3.0 HDD. It does not show up in the Finder. It also doesn't show up in Disk Utility, Time Machine, or the terminal command diskutil. I used both USB ports and it still doesn't work. I even tried a normal USB 2.0 cable and it still doesn't show up. The disk's packaging says it is compatible with USB 2.0, and it can be recognized and read on other computers, but not mine.
Also, if my computer is booted with the hard drive plugged in, it gets stuck at the gray screen. Holding C during bootup also causes it to get stuck.
The hard disk is encrypted (filevault 2) and I make all mounted drives appear on the desktop.

Hey guys,
I am having the same issue with my HD. It was working one day and then the next my mac does not recoginize that it is even pluged in....yet I can move my external hd to my macbook pro and it sees the drive. I have tried shutting down the system, using the Y connector, using an alternative power source, Reformating the HD, and still nothing works, yet it works on all my other MAC's and I have 5 totall macs! I don't get it, why all the other mac sees it but this one want. I have tried to plug in other external HD to the mac that is not reading the HD and it will work with them. Any ideas as to why it want see this one HD?

New SCSI drive does not appear in disk manager - what can I do?

I am working on an older HP ML350G4
It has server 2003 installed.
It has run out of memory, so I added another drive. I rebooted, and went to format it but !! not in disc manager.
I cannot find it anywhere. There's no unrecognised devices in devmgr, yet it does not sghow up in disk manager either.
Please give me some advice as to what I have done wrong/can do to get it up?

Hi VW Crank,
“I added another drive. I rebooted” are you installed the new disk then you can not found your system volume? It most possible is you need install the RAID array driver after
you install the new server.
The related HP support forum information:
Accepted Solution need RAID drivers for initial OS installation
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Operating-Systems-Software-Recovery/need-RAID-drivers-for-initial-OS-installation/td-p/1741863
I’m glad to be of help to you!
*** This response contains a reference to a third party World Wide Web site. Microsoft is providing this information as a convenience to you. Microsoft does not control these sites and has not tested any software or information found on these sites; therefore,
Microsoft cannot make any representations regarding the quality, safety, or suitability of any software or information found there. There are inherent dangers in the use of any software found on the Internet, and Microsoft cautions you to make sure that you
completely understand the risk before retrieving any software from the Internet. ***
We
are trying to better understand customer views on social support experience, so your participation in this
interview project would be greatly appreciated if you have time.
Thanks for helping make community forums a great place.

My hard drive does not appear in the Finder window

I installed a second internal hard drive inside my G5, but it never shows up in the finder window, nor anytime I try to access files from within applications (it appears on the desktop though). How can I configure my computer so that it always sees this drive and grants me access?

The reason for resetting nvram is to force the G5 to rebuild the device tree, which it seems "loath" to do without a kick start.
Swapping drives oddly enough seems to leave a profile in nvram for the old device.
Personally, booting into Open Firmware is easier, thorough, and if that was all it was, works (never liked the reboot over and over zap pram which, to reset nvram, must be done from cold boot).

Back up hard drive does not appear

can't see the My Passport hard drive. what do I do? I trying to repair it but it show up an error. says"Error: 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."
Please Please help me, I have all my back up on that.......

See mount section in 1st linked article.
Disk Unmount Using Terminal
Disk Utility – Force Mount Disk

Replacement Hard Drive does not appear in Disk Utility.

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for