Unmountable external hard drive

I have a Hitachi 1TB external drive that suddenly is unmountable - disk utility says that it's fine, repair disk says it's fine, but it won't mount - any ideas? The files are extremely important (aren't they always???) and I really need to get it fixed! Would greatly appreciate your ideas/help!

I have this problem too with my Western Digital 1TB My Passport for Mac.
Downloaded Card Data Recovery - did not work. The software self terminated itself when the problematic WD is connected. Starts up fine when the WD is not connected by USB.
Then I downloaded Remo Recovery. Starts up fine, scans fine and appears to save the files but ALL the files 'saved' are unreadable.
Finally, downloaded Stellar Phoenix in a last ditch attempt to recover my precious video files. Starts fine, saves fine BUT it cannot save files above 200MB because the WD stops working every 10 minutes.So, did not solve my problem totally because I have so many files above 200MB.
And yes, I PAID for all the software above. And the first two software are reluctant to refund me my money until their development team can ascertain whether it's a software bug, over online web conference. And because of the time differences, I can never get online with them. So, all my money gone.
Until one day I opened Activity Monitor and noticed this 'fsck_hfs' starting up everytime I connected the problematic WD My Passport for Mac.
So, tried to Force Quit 'fsck_hfs' and VOILA!
A dialogue box popped up and says that the Passport for Mac cannot be repaired and that I can move and copy files from it but not save to it.
PHEW!!
At least I can access the files and save them to my Seagate 1TB although now I am having a problem opening FCP X project files rescued from the WD.

Similar Messages

  • Unmounted External Hard Drive, Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed

    Earlier today, I disconnected the external hard drive while it was working.
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    Whenever, I ran the system verify or the repair. I got this error: Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed
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    I have had the exact same situation occur, but was able to follow these steps to successfully save everything!!
    The Unix program "dd" will instruct a drive to stream out all of it's data from beginning to end without regard to file structure, therefore creating an exact block-for-block duplicate. By doing this, it will allow you to copy everything off without having to mount the drive. It also ignores any corruption or physically damaged blocks on the drive which would otherwise crash or freeze the Finder. It saves the data to a disk image file which you can then open and use without fear of imminent failure (the format of the disk image will be the same as the original drive). Now that the data is preserved, you can safely go through and recover your files. Keep in mind that if a file was damaged or corrupted on the drive, it will be unusable, but at least you'll be able to get to the good ones safely. In my case, using "dd", I had no problems and got every file off. If it doesn't work for you, at least it's impossible for just trying it to further damage your files. I can recommend a few other remedies if this doesn't work for you.
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    3. In Terminal, type:
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    !! Replace "/my_directory/" with the path to where you want to save !!
    !! Replace "image.dmg" with the name you want to give the disk image (must end with .dmg) !!
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  • Ntfs external hard drives and fat32 4gb flash drive not able to unmount

    Hi everyone,
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    Hi,
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    Windows
    Available USB port
    Windows 2000/XP/Vista®
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    Best Regards,
    Vincent Hu

  • In disk utility, it shows that my external hard drive is somehow unmounted and I can't access it in finder or repair it in Disk Utility. How can I get this working without losing my important data?

    In disk utility, it shows that my external hard drive is somehow unmounted and I can't access it in finder or repair it in Disk Utility. How can I get this working without losing my important data?
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    When you erased the disk did you select Mac OS Extended Journaled as the format option?

  • Can't unmount my External Hard Drive?

    Hi guys,
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    Any advice would be great!
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    Hi elliswicks,
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    You should have no problems carrying out Step 3. If this fails, you'll have to rely on Joe Gramm's advanced method.
    Hope you (and anybody else) have benefited from this simpler method! Don't forget to like or put "This solved my question" or "This helped me"!
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    from Galaxy User

  • External hard drive won't unmount for disk utility.

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  • My WD 2tb external hard drive will not unmount from my MacBook Pro.

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  • External hard drives get improperly unmounted

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    Hello Ari,
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  • External Hard Drive Unmounts

    I posted this in the G5 discussion also.
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    Not having a lot of luck with that Mac.
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  • External Hard Drive unmount itself

    Help!
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  • Why does my external hard drive unmount?

    Hi,
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    Big Rocco wrote:
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  • External Hard Drive Unmounts itself

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  • External hard drive error / disk utility not repairing

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    Message was edited by: TheSpoon

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    What Mac OSX version are your running ("iOS" as shown in your profile cannot run on a Mac computer)?

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