USB Hard Drive not being recognized

I have a SATA hard drive in a USB enclosure. It suddenly stopped functioning, and I took it into a shop. They said it showed up outside the enclosure, but had no files. And that since it was formatted for Mac (They were using a PC) that the enclosure was most likely the issue. I bought a new one and put the hard drive in it. It didn't show up on the first try, so I double checked the connections, and one was loose. When fixed, it showed up right away. But now it won't show up. All connections are secure, and I've reset my PRAM.

Got a sata<->usb connector, and replaced the wiring of my enclosure with the connector. All is well.

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External USB hard drive not being recognized

Hello! I'm sure this has been posted before, but excuse my naivety with this sort of thing...
I have a mac mini 10.5.6 (1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) and I run the Time Machine function to an external usb hard drive. The hard drive worked fine (plugged into the usb port on an older keyboard), but I went out and bought a new aluminum apple keyboard (because they look so cool ^_^ ) - I plugged the external usb drive into the keyboard and it wasn't recognized, so I tried plugging the external drive directly into the mac mini, but it is still not recognized. It is not showing up in Disk Utility or in System Profiler
Help? I'd hate to have to give up this fancy keyboard...
Thank you!
Dr. E

I believe I had my external drive plugged into the (old) keyboard because with the old mac that I had didn't have a free usb port for it - so when I got the mini I just plugged things back in where they were. But I have always had the Time Machine back up to this drive (connected to the keyboard) though it has been slow (another reason I thought the new keyboard was a good idea).
I tried restarting the computer without the alu keyboard plugged in, but same problem of no drive showing up.
Here is what System Profiler has to say about my drive:
USB2.0 Storage Device:
Capacity: 93.16 GB
Removable Media: Yes
Detachable Drive: Yes
BSD Name: disk1
Product ID: 0x6830
Vendor ID: 0x04b4 (Cypress Semiconductor)
Version: 0.01
Serial Number: DEF107920F07
Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Cypress Semiconductor
Location ID: 0x3d130000
Current Available (mA): 100
Current Required (mA): 0
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
USB:
Capacity: 92.84 GB
Available: 53.14 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s2
Mount Point: /Volumes/USB
I don't know the brand or model as it has 'always' been in the case that in which it currently resides and I didn't physically buy the thing :\ I do know that no software was installed with the drive as I assumed that when I put all the old info from the original mac to the mini that it was the sort of thing that would carry over.
Sorry I'm not terribly helpful - Thank you!
Dr. E

External USB Hard Drives Not being recognized since recently.

Some quick facts:
Using early-2011 MacBook Pro, 15"
Two HD's worked fine recently (around before upgrade to Mavericks):
1 Lacie Neil Poulton 1TB Disk
1 Western Digital MyBook 500GB Disk
BOTH were formatted to Mac OS Journaled since day 1, so NO bloatware/manufacturer software. Purely storage.
The 2 drives are connected via a powered USB hub, but connecting it directly doesn't help. (strangely, the keyboard and mouse attached via USB hub work fine)
Tested with 7 different USB drives to test– none of them work
The 2 drives actually show up in the System Profiler, but not in Disk Utility.
Both Hard Drives work on my 2012 Macbook Air 13" (running on Mountain Lion) absolutely fine. Tried the 7 USB drives– they all work as well.
Tried SMC reset. Briefly detected the drives, but once I put it to sleep and turned it back on, it stopped detecting it again.
Help!!!!!

Both Hard Drives work on my 2012 Macbook Air 13" (running on Mountain Lion) absolutely fine. Tried the 7 USB drives– they all work as well.
Yes, youre having a problem with WD software and firmware, this has been a point of much discussion with WD software and Mavericks , and affecting drives OTHER THAN WD, via their software
you can read about it here, and ask WD about their removal software
http://community.wd.com/t5/External-Drives-for-Mac/bd-p/passport_mac
http://www.tuaw.com/2013/11/27/western-digital-smartware-software-update-address es-bug/
From WD:
You can now download the WD Software Uninstaller. This utility will remove Mac WD SmartWare and WD Drive Manager software. You can find the uninstaller under any of the Mac Drive Downloads sections such as the My Book Studio below.
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=124&sid=214&lang=en

Hard Drive not being recognized on my Graphite Clamshell

I have a challenge for anyone. I have a ibook 366(clamshell) that is not recognizing the hd. It was working wonderfully one night I shut it down and the next day I get the flashing question mark. I've tried all of the normal stuff: zap pram, reset nvram tried to use command and s but it didn't go to the programmers screen and all the such. I can boot from a cd but none of the utilities see the hd. I have taken the hd out and connected it to a usb to ide cable that allows me to use it as an external drive and it is recognized without any problem on all of the other macs I connect it to and even on a pc (I know I said the bad word.)Does anyone have any clue what could be the issue. Every thing else seems to work fine. Just the hd is not being recognized. I even put in a different hd. I even formatted the drive using one of my macs that I only have 9.2.2 on and installed a os on it and it still didn't work. The hard drive worked fine and the os with all of its components seemed to be fine. I know it's an older system but it's something that I can let the kids play on and not be concerned with losing any of my files.
I appreciate any help
iBook 366 Graphite

Duane, Thanks for your reply. Is there any way to test this? I am going to try to see if any of the utility disks can recognize the hd. I've tried DW 4.0, the Utility Disks on OS 9, X. I've even tried FWB and a few other tools.

Hard drives not being recognized on Server 2012 R2

Hi,
I added 2 hard drives to my server but they are not being recognized by the operating system. They show in the bios but no where in the OS do they show. They used to be external hard drives but I took the hard drive out and installed them into the server.
Are there some type of drivers I need to download for them to be recognized? One of them will be shown but it tells me I need to reformat it. I don't want to do this since I have about 1TB of data on it.
Thank you,
James

What server hardware is being used? May need the manufacturer chipset and support pack in the case of integrated disk controller.
Regards, Dave Patrick ....
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights.

WD Passport External Hard Drive Not Being Recognized on PowerBook G4

I bought a WD Passport 320GB USB 2.0 powered external hard drive that isnt recognized by my PowerBook G4. The funny thing is that the external HDD works perfectly on my friends MacBook! What's the deal with that?
I called AppleCare but they just told me to take it into my nearest Apple Store... LAME!
Can anyone else help?
Message was edited by: WRDinc

I had the same problem. See below for the answer from WD (...sigh...):
Cause:
Many 15" and 17" Macintosh PowerBook and Mac Book Pro Laptops do not provide enough power through a single USB port for the WD Passport™ external USB hard drive to work correctly. The WD Passport™ external USB hard drive requires a minimum of 1000Ma (Milliamps) of power for proper usage.
Resolution:
You can purchase a WD Passport™ Power Supply or a USB 2.0 Power Booster Cable from links below to the Western Digital Online Store.

External Hard Drives not being recognized

I have 3 external hard drives. Had them for a long time now. I recently made only one change: I decided to start using the 'sleep' mode.
I noticed the sleep mode and external hard drives didn't get along real well, so I simply took the externals (used only for backing up data) and turned them off.
Its now been about 2 weeks, time to fire them back up and backup my data. Only one of the 3 is being recognized. The other two seem to come on, make the usual whiny noise and such, but aren't seen in the finder.
I've tried restarting my computer, turning off/on the hard drives, unplugging/replugging them from power, unplugging/replugging them into USB. I've verified connections, that kind of thing. Nada.
Any ideas on what to do to help my computer 'see' that they are there? this is a bit baffling to me and disconcerting, to say the least. I've never had problems with my computer recognizing the externals before.
Ideas are appreciated.
PowerMac G4 1.42 duel Mac OS X (10.4.6)

'sleep mode' ?
Do you mean the drives are triggered to not spin up for a period after powering on ? This is a feature designed for enormous banks of drives, so that when they are powered on, only a fraction spin up immediately, then another set, usually 12 seconds later, then another set, etc, until all are up to speed. This is reduce the power surge from spinning up 700 hard drives simultaneously in a commercial solution.

External hard drives not being recognized by Lr4

When I hooked up my two external hard drives to my computer this week, Lr4 is not recognizing them. Each folder has a question mark by it.
Appreciate any help..thanks!

Hi Jim,
I spent some time doing maintenance on Lil's computer. We were on public networks for 10 days and so I ran some cleanup software to help ensure that we don't have some virus or other malware messing things up.
Then I did some comparing and it appears that Lightroom has the G and H drives reversed.
I have enclosed 4 screen shots. Two show the strong(but not perfect) correlation between LR drive G and Explorer drive H........and vice versa. Another shows the K drive and the fourth shows the G drive one level up as you requested. I believe that when we disconnected this computer to take on vacation that we just pulled all the plugs and did NOT take any steps to "logically" disconnect them. If LR is sensitive to drives just being removed by pulling the cable, then perhaps that contributed to this situation...although I believe that we used the same procedure in the past.
Thanks,
David Polley

External Hard Drive not being recognized

I made a topic some time ago but it never got answered.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1906969&tstart=0&messageID=906 6822#9066822
This hard drive has never worked on this computer and I am still not sure why. It does not show up in Disk Utility or in the System Profiler. It is formatted in FAT32. It is plugged into the wall and comes right up in Windows. As a test I used bootcamp and went into Windows XP. Plugged it into the same USB slot on the side and it came up. But upon rebooting into OS X it was no longer recognized. I actually got it to come up one time by opening USB Probe. After unplugging it and plugging back in, it no longer worked. I don't know what I did that one time but it will not come back. The time I had it running I moved files around to make sure it was working and it seemed fine. Does anyone know what I could do to get it working?
Model: Acomodata Model HD250UHE5-72
Thank you very much.

eddiefb3 wrote:
It has an external power source that plugs into the wall. As for the model,
Acomodata Model HD250UHE5-72
OK. They're supposed to be Mac compatible.
I guess you could see if it at least is recognized by the operating system even if it doesn't mount. You can open System Profiler in Utilities (or About this Mac > More Info...). The USB device tree should be under Hardware > USB.

External Hard Drive Not Being Recognized By MacBook

My Toshiba external hard drive (1TB, brand new) does not show up anywhere on my MacBook Pro (Also brand new). The light on the external hard drive comes on so it's not a connection issue, like the cord being broken. But nothing happens when I plug it into my MacBook, aside from the light coming on. It doesn't pop up on the desktop or in disk utilities or finder. I don't have my old PC laptop any more, all my files from that computer are on this hard drive and all I want to do is transfer them to my MacBook. And even though I don't want to lose any of my files, I can't even erase anything on the external hard drive to reformat it because it's like...not talking to the MacBook...

Your Mac should be able to recognize many different types of drives (including Windows-formatted drives) immediately for Reading, provided they are in good working condition and not damaged. There should be no need to transfer to a different type of drive.
If there is no recognition of this drive, see if it can be seen in Disk Utility.
If your aim is to transfer the data on it DO NOT use ERASE or PARTITION as these will completely erase all the information on the Drive.
If the drive is present while the Mac sleeps, it is likely to drop out and not be seen any longer, especially if it is a USB-powered drive.

USB flash drive not being recognized as a startup disk?

Hi everyone, I've been searching for similar questions but haven't found one that exactly matches my experience. So, I'm going to try and explain my issue in hopes that others may be able to help.
I'm trying to create a bootable flash drive from which I can install lion, and eventually Mountain Lion when it is released onto my main hard drive. My main reason for doing this is to have a way that I can perform a clean install of the operating system. Yes, I know I am old fashioned, but sometimes I prefer clean operating system installs rather than upgrading. In any case, I have downloaded the lion setup file from the Mac app store (Install Mac OS X Lion.app) and am following the directions given on this page to do this procedure. These directions are consistent with directions found on various other sources online. Having this file saved to my hard drive, I was able to find and extract the disk image file from the package InstallESD.dmg to another folder. Once extracted, I plugged in my flash drive and attempted to use disk utility to restore the disk image to my flash drive. I selected the dmg file as my source and the flash drive as the destination. I then clicked restore and was warned that all data on the flash drive would be erased while the disk image was restored to my flash drive. I was prepared for this, so I allowed the process to continue, and it appeared to proceed with no problem. When disk utility was finished, I did a quick look at my flash drive using finder and confirmed that it did in fact appear to contain a disk image of the .dmg file. Here's where things get interesting however.
When I go to system preferences and choose startup disk, my flash drive is not listed as an optional disk from which to boot, only my hard drive ("macintosh HD"). When I restart and hold down the option key, my flash drive is not listed as a startup disk either. I know that the non-intel based macs are not capable of booting from USB, but this is certainly not my issue as I have an intel macbook pro, mid 2009 model. My flash drive is about 4 or 5 years old; it is a PNY Technologies Attaché 16 gb flash drive. I have no trouble viewing and transferring files to and from the flash drive, the only issue is that my computer seems to refuse to recognize it as a startup disk. Are there certain flash drives which do not support booting? This would normally seem more like a computer issue rather than a flash drive issue, but most people seem to have no problem doing what I'm trying to do. Unfortunately I do not have another flash drive with which to test this, and I didn't really feel like buying another flash drive just to test this out if in fact this is not a flash drive issue. I am planning to upgrade to the macbook pro retina soon which of course does not have an optical drive, which is one of the reasons I would like to get this working. Can anyone think of something else I can try? Is it more likely an issue with the macbook pro or the flash drive?
Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

The format says Mac OS Extended. All of the settings were set during the disk image restore process. Even if I format the flash drive as extended journaled or some other format, all of these settings are reverted when I do the restore from the disk image. I will just copy all of the information that disk utility has so that you can see it.
Mount Point : /Volumes/Mac OS X Install ESD Capacity : 16.11 GB (16,106,110,976 Bytes) Format : Mac OS Extended Available : 12.3 GB (12,303,499,264 Bytes) Owners Enabled : Yes Used : 3.8 GB (3,802,611,712 Bytes) Number of Folders : 128 Number of Files : 876

Upgraded hard drive not being recognized

I've upgraded the hard drive in my new Unibody 15" macbook pro to a 7200 rpm Hitatchi Travelstar 7k320 from the original 5400 rpm drive. When I boot from the installer CD, one of the following occurs:
•I am able to open disk utility, see the drive, and reformat/re-partition it. However, the installer fails to copy files to the drive and stops after about 1%.
•Disk Utility fails to erase/re-partition the drive, and the installer unmounts the disk
•Disk Utility does not list the drive as an option at all.
Does anyone have a possible solution? Applecare wouldn't help me out being that the drive is third-party.

Prep the new drive as follows:
Extended Hard 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.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

Why is my Toshiba external hard drive not being recognized by my new Mac?

So: When I moved from Colombia I packed my stuff in an external hard drive, that was at the end of last year, Today I got my new MacBook Pro and I can't transfer my stuff because it doesn't even pop up anywhere. I read some other people's post and no: It doesn't appear in any of the two places people say it should appear (or I am not seeing it) whenever it doesn't automatically appears in desktop.
Funny story: It appears that my Mac's hard drive is a toshiba, the same brand as my 1tb external hard drive.
Suggestions?

I'm having the exact same problem... I have my Toshiba 1TB Hard Drive which I formatted to FAT32 so I was able to watch films on my PS3 off of it and recently got a MacBook Pro 13" i7 8GB RAM 750GB HDD, which is unable to read it (and I'm experiencing the same White Light when used with a PC and PS3 - which is when it works, and Blue Light when it is plugged into my MacBook and unable to open).
I've tried to follow as many instructions as possible that I've found on the internet but nothing seems to work - it won't even appear in Disk Utility, I don't know what to do. All I need to know is whether this a problem that can be fixed or not - otherwise I'll just get a new Hard Drive.

Hard Drive not being recognized T43

I have a T43 that was working fine then today it failed to find the hard drive I have run the drive diag and reseated the drive. Before I run out and purchase a replacement I would like to run a diag on the motherboard to make sure it is not gone bad. I cannot find anything for this does it exists if so can anyone point me in the correct direction?

Welcome to the forum!
Download PC-Doctor for DOS, burn the CD, boot from it and run all the diagnostic tests...
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-56222
Good luck.
Cheers,
George
In daily use: R60F, R500F, T61, T410
Collecting dust: T60
Enjoying retirement: A31p, T42p,
Non-ThinkPads: Panasonic CF-31 & CF-52, HP 8760W
Starting Thursday, 08/14/2014 I'll be away from the forums until further notice. Please do NOT send private messages since I won't be able to read them. Thank you.

Super Talent 8 GB USB Pico drive not being recognized on my iMac.

Hello, I recently bought a Super Talent 8 GB usb drive. I tried inserting it into my iMac (previous generation, in between the first and latest version) and it doesn't show up on the desktop. The packaging says it is Mac compatible and USB 1.1 and 2.0 compatible. I tried using my keyboard's ports and my main ports on the back of the computer and it still doesn't show up. Does anybody that owns this same drive know any tips?

One thing to try is doing a SMC and PRAM reset on your iMac. Just in case here are instructions on how to do that, let us know what happens when you insert the flash drive after doing the reset.
*SMC & PRAM Resets*
To do these:
1. Turn off your iMac and unplug everything from it for 30 seconds.
2. Plug in the power cord, keyboard and mouse only.
3. Press the power button and immediately hold down the Option, Command, P & R keys until you hear the second gong then release the keys. Your machine will start up normally, then check for the issues you are having.
Regards,
Roger

USB Hard Drive not being recognized

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