WD My Book External Hard Drive Gone!

Hey everybody,
I have a Western Digital My Book Premium Edition 500GB External Hard Drive. When trying to make a copy of my harddrive (preparations for Leopard) the driver it uses to run was deleted. Do you have any idea how I can restore it and get it back to normal?

I have a 1 TB Western Digital My Book Studio Edition. It worked as a stand alone drive for a while, using Firewire 800 to 400 cable. Yesterday I used it as a Time Machine drive. Took about 5 hours to back up 240 GB. Today I had about three power outages. The WD drive has not worked over Firewire since. I have tried various suggestions involving powering down both drive and iMac and attempting to connect. The Western Digital drive is not showing in Finder, System Preferences, or Disk Utility.
As it is a triple interface, I was able to connect it via the slower USB. Drive contents are intact, and Time Machine backs up over USB. I tried both Firewire ports on my iMac. I connected my other Firewire drive to the iMac. It works, so that proves the iMac Firewire port is OK. It is looking distinctly like the Western Digital My Book problem is either a faulty WD Firewire port, or possibly a faulty cable.
I should have a chance to try a different cable over the weekend. I will also be able to try the drive on a different computer. That should establish where the problem is.
I don't know any general way to force my iMac to search for a Firewire drive it simply does not see.

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From what it seems like, You may want to try and do a Time Machine backup. Time machine is meant for backing up data like photos and movies automatically. You can set up Time Machine by going to the apple in the top left, system prefrences, and Time Machine. On the right click select disk, select your external drive, and turn Time Machine on. Now your computer will back up every hour while that is connected

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@ [email protected]

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Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
When you get this message, does is also show a -9972 error number? If so, the Apple disk utility can't repair the drive. As Boece recommended, Disk Warrior, or similar, program would be your next step, and it can often repair what Disk Utility can't repair. However, if Disk Warrior can't repair it, then you want to look at other software to try and recover the data, as the next step would be an erase and restore. And if that didn't work, then the drive is toast. There are services that can recover the data off a dead drive, however, they are not inexpensive.
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USB2.0 PCI cards that use the NEC chipset seem to give the least amount of problems for Mac users.
OWC have a few different ones for sale.
http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Search.cfm?Ntk=Primary&Ns=P_Popularity%7c1&Ne=5 000&N=7057&Ntt=USB2**0**cards
Do you also connect the external USB drive to the AC power as well while you use it ?
Sometimes USB external drive problems are resolved simply by plugging them into the mains power and trying again.
Stewie
Message was edited by: stewiesno1

External hard drive gone!!

Don't know if it's the right forum to post, but anyway:
I pluged in my external harddrive (Western Digital 2TB),but suddenly i could read the files, but i couldn't open them! So I tried to remove the disk usig disk utilities but it couldn't. And after a few tries i turned of my computer and removed it. I started it up again and pluged in the disk and got the error-mesage "The computer couldn't read the disk". I looked in disk utilities and didn't see the partion. Everything was gone!! 500 gb of more or less important stuff!! The most important things I have an copy of on my internal disk, but i need the partion back!!! It was fine yesterday... Please help me!!!

If it's port powered use a powered USB hub
Try it on another computer, if it's a NTFS drive, update your software to read/write that format
Other than that, if the drive is not being seen, not much we can do, it or it's cable, or is likely dead.
 Most commonly used backup methods explained
 Data recovery efforts explained

Time Machine external hard drive gone.

I have seen other posts that are similar to this, but not exactly like it, and am hoping someone can give me some guidance. I had the read only message come up on the time machine after I did the latest update. It said it was read only, and that the disk needed to be reformatted. Well, now the disk is gone. It doesn't show up on the available disks to back up to. Any ideas?

I just turned it off , unplugged the USB from my iMac, and plugged it into my MacBook Pro, and I can see it in the disk utility now. But when I tried to repair it, I got the following message.
"Verifying and Repair Volume "Time Machine Backups"
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.
Can I just erase and reformat?

I had to disconnect my My Book USB to G5, firewire to external hard drive

I had this hard drive formated journaled whatever was recommended and it has been used to drag all photos off my full G5 internal drive which has only a 80GB hard drive. I have added a second internal drive and have successfully formated it and it shows up on desktop. I reconnected another Maxtor 40GB HD and it showed up when i reconnected power to computer after moving desks around for construction.
Now the 360MY Book external hard drive after connecting power and firewire and usb to G5 does not show up on hard drive. I was using this partioned. On part for backing up with SuperDuper. It does not show up on hard drive. I should have bought a full firewire 500 for photos but this was on sale. I had to write to this forum before. Turning off power, disconnecting the MYBOOK and turning off the computer by shutting down did not work for me. I think as I recall someone wrote to on restarting the G5 holding down two keys like command something C or D or whatever. I have tried various reboots and unconnects and cannot get my backup system working nor access 90 % of my photo collection as I dragged them to a folder on the external drive as recommended to free up space on internal drive. I am back to only 14 GB space on my primary. Please help. I paid twice for home consultants and got burnt both times. Neither guy helped me set up a system of photoshop files on my external drive or recovered my lost files which should have been in .Mac backup on my La Cie or on MYbook in Super Duper. Why do consultants get to charge by hour $100 without results??????? sad switcher.Pcs recognize external drives and don;t lose IPHOTO libraries every time they get to about 12000 images. Very disappointed in the cost of IPHOTO and won't ever use it again. It takes up way to much space and is always lost ( not always by me ....twice by apple store geniuses.

After posting I decided since I rant too much for your taste I would try another time. I ejected the smaller external hard drive and plugged the usb into the same place on my G5 as the one which was mounting and working before ejecting. It showed up.
The only question remaining is : Now I have no place but USB hubs to connect my other two external hard drives. I read in my NAPP web site of lots of folks with their 500GB firewire externals stacked up and in use with their computers.
Is there an order in plugging in and powering up an external after all is disconnected. I don't think I did anything different. The Current WD MyBook 360 is back alive. But I still need to get my LaCie firewire Porsche working. I only have two usb ports on the back of my G5 so I must have used my Belkin power enabled hubs before when I had them all working. I only disconnected due to a remodel of this office and it had to be done. Any referals to Apple referance articles on using external hard drives would be welcome. I have been unable to find any. Please disregard prior message today. It was the usb plug into my computer that I hadn't changed in my attempts to trouble shoot. always power.
I would like a good solid article about dos and don'ts with desktops and laptops and using external hard drives. I have lots of books and have a membership to local MUGG with MacFixit. Thanks for answering.

WD My Book External Hard Drive Gone!

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