My USB external hard disk won't work anymore after I updated to 10.4.10

Welcome to Apple Discussions!

Despite the fact that this issue seems to happen on Firewire, occasionally it happens on USB too. My FAQ* here may help:

http://www.macmaps.com/firewirebug2.html

You can get an external Firewire hard drive case from http://www.cooldrives.com/ or http://www.macsales.com/ that has better Mac support and won't be subject to these issues.

- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

Message was edited by: a brody

I might also add two more solutions which I haven't yet added to my FAQ include:

1. Removing the kextcache files in:

/System/Library/

2. Applying the relevant combo update over again after repairing permissions, and repairing permissions which finished can also fix the issue. For the MacBook Pro that would be this one:

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx10410comboupdatev11intel.html

The mkext file should not be removed.

To repair permissions go to Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility and then select the boot hard drive in Disk Utility, and click on First Aid. There you can repair permissions.

You should do this before and after every update to avoid most update problems.

If after rebooting, you aren't able to get it be fixed, then it is more likely your drive needs a better firmware or a different external hard drive case.

As Mac OS X has no known viruses in the wild, that leaves you with one of three possibilities.

1. When connected to the Windows machine, a virus has written over a critical boot block area which allows the drive to become crossplatform. Get the latest Windows virus detection software and make sure the drive is clean of Windows viruses.

2. The firmware that allows it to communicate driverless has become corrupted on the drive case. Replacing the drive case itself will eliminate that problem, as suggested earlier.

3. The directory damage is just enough that the boot block itself is damaged. Backup any critical data from the drive onto the Windows machine first, and run Alsoft Disk Warrior 4.0 to repair the directory and see if that works.

The fact that Mac OS X 10.3.9 won't read it basically eliminates this as a 10.4.10 problem. Only a boot block or firmware issue like this could make a drive not readable on one platform, but readable on another.

P.S. please note the nomenclature of Mac, versus MAC on this user tip, as it appears you haven't learned it:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=503342&tstart=10

My external drive quit after I upgraded from 10.4.8 to 10.4.9.

NOTHING WRONG WITH THE DRIVE - got some advice on reformatting & "it was the drive problems, .... , etc.

What I did to recover my files:

I a transferred the external drive files THRU a pc and on to a flash drive. Then transferred the files from the flash drive on to my iMac.

----

Plugged my USB drive into my Windows computer (HP lap top in my case)

Then loaded a USB "flash drive" (SD in my case) into one of the other Windows computer USB ports.

Used Windows "Explorer" to transfer the files from the external disk drive to the flash drive. (Nice to have a multi GB flash drive)

Plugged the flash drive into my iMac and downloaded the files to the iMac hard drive.

Hope this helps - I don't know what the problem is, but I do know a solution.

Find out if Alsoft Disk Warrior will repair non-HFS volumes. If it does, attempt to repair it with that. If that doesn't work, you may need to use a Windows program that does the equivalent from Windows. If neither works, you may just have a dying hard drive.