disk utility can't repair external hard drive

Question

disk utility can't repair external hard drive

A couple months back, I had to get a whole new hard drive case for my external because the power cord broke. Anyway, It's worked fine until now...
The hard drive doesn't show up with the other volumes.

It does show up on Disk Utility. When I try to repair or verify the drive, it works up until the end, but then it automatically quits and it says this:

Verifying volume “FIREWIRE”
** /dev/disk1s1
** Phase 1 - Read FAT
** Phase 2 - Check Cluster Chains
** Phase 3 - Checking Directories
Unable to read directory (Input/output error)
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit

1 non HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair

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Anyway, I have 45GB of music as well as movies and photographs that mean a lot to me so I hope I don't have to erase the drive or anything...

Thanks to anyone who helps me out.

powerbook g4 12", Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Apr 30, 2008 7:31 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Apr 30, 2008 8:09 PM in response to sea of clocks

As far as I know DU cannot repair a FAT formatted drive. You may be able to repair it on a Windows machine with appropriate Windows software.

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Answer 2

Apr 30, 2008 8:48 PM in response to Kappy

is there any mac software that can repair it?

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Answer 3

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Apr 30, 2008 8:52 PM in response to sea of clocks

Not that I'm aware of.

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Answer 4

May 1, 2008 6:42 AM in response to sea of clocks

Mac OS X provides a command-line utility (that you can access from Terminal.app) called fsck_msdos. It can fix some, but not all, errors on FAT volumes. Your best bet is still a Windows machine to fix a Windows filesystem, but you can still do this (open Terminal.app to get the shell prompt):

$ fsck_msdos -p /dev/disk2s1

... (mind you, you need to replace /dev/disk2s1 with whatever the device file for the FAT filesystem is; you can generally figure that out by doing 'mount' to get a list of the disk partitions in use, and then 'ls /dev/disk*' to get a list of disk partitions -- the ones not in use are probably it).

It will work pretty well for run-of-the-mill issues, but if there's something really botched in the filesystem, no doubt a Windows application designed to recover Windows data from Windows disks will handle more esoteric types of corruption.

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Answer 5

May 1, 2008 8:14 AM in response to J D McIninch

ok thanks for the help.

I'm not really a windows expert so if someone could point me in the right direction to software that could fix the problem, that'd be great

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Answer 6

May 3, 2008 9:18 AM in response to sea of clocks

I just hooked up the drive to a PC, and it works perfectly, I can access my files and everything. So it must be a Mac problem?
I know this isn't a Windows forum, but if anyone knows how to fix a drive with a PC, please help, thanks.

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Answer 7

BDAqua

Level 10

239,219 points

May 3, 2008 11:50 AM in response to sea of clocks

Not near a PC at the moment, but Window's has a pretty good built in Disk Repair... Admin Tools or something... search help for disk repair.

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Answer 8

May 7, 2008 9:41 PM in response to BDAqua

Nice, thanks for the help... I'll see if my friend's PC can do it...

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Answer 9

May 7, 2008 10:19 PM in response to sea of clocks

Hmm, I can't seem to find anything on Windows (XP) that will fix my exact problem...

Then again, I am the crappiest Windows user ever so, once again, any help would be great.

I searched "disk repair" on the help and support center, and it gave me a bunch of ways to fix the drive depending on the problem. The thing is, none of the problems seemed to match mine...
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Your personal data files are missing or have been corrupted, or you want to revert to a previous version of a file.

After updating a device driver, you can log on, but the system is unstable.

After installing a new device, the system is unstable.

Changes made to your system or application settings are causing your computer to run poorly and you do not know how to restore the previous settings.

After installing an application, the system is unstable or an application is not working properly.

Operating system does not start (the logon screen does not appear)
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I'm not really sure what the exact problem is, I just know that it isn't working on the Mac, but it is on the PC.

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