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External Maxtor not readable anymore

While trying to access folders on my external Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini (320 GB), folders started disappearing when I clicked on them.The disk would not eject, and after restarting my MBP the disk became "unreadable".

I can see it in Disk Utility, (though it magically shows as a 2 TB disk now), but I'm not allowed to click on any of the repair options...

I tried Data Rescue (which indicated that it would take 20145.5 hours to scan the disk) with no result, DiskWarrior turned out being more of a coward... (it wouldn't even see the disk) while Disk Genius just impressed me with its spectacular visual effects but did absolutely nothing to help with my situation... I spent hours and hours trying to find something online but the very few people who managed to save something were so happy for making it, that they wouldn't even bother to elaborate on how they made it.

I have all my photographic and graphic design work of the 3 past months on this disk, if anyone can help me in any way to save some of the data, I would be eternally grateful.

Also if anyone knows how I can force-mount this disk PLEASE, pretty pretty please, tell me how....

Thanks in advance!

MacBook Pro 15" 2GHz, 2GB Ram, Mac OS X (10.5.5), -Mac Mac! -Who's there?

Posted on Oct 15, 2008 2:47 PM

Reply
13 replies

Oct 15, 2008 2:59 PM in response to memos

Did you do this:

Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions

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 Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger and Leopard.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now restart normally.

If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (4.0 for Tiger, and 4.1 for Leopard) and/or TechTool Pro (4.6.1 for Leopard) to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.

Oct 16, 2008 1:24 AM in response to Kappy

Let me clarify that this is an external USB Storage Disk.
I tried everything, booting from the OS X installation disk, using DiskWarrior, Techtool Pro, etc. but the disk was not there... the only thing that found the disk was DU which said that S.M.A.R.T status is not available for this drive...

Again, if anyone has a way of force-mounting a drive please let me know...

Oct 16, 2008 8:48 AM in response to memos

memos wrote:
Let me clarify that this is an external USB Storage Disk.
I tried everything, booting from the OS X installation disk, using DiskWarrior, Techtool Pro, etc. but the disk was not there... the only thing that found the disk was DU which said that S.M.A.R.T status is not available for this drive...

Again, if anyone has a way of force-mounting a drive please let me know...


Have you ever used this external drive on a PC? That has been known to corrupt things.
Is the drive powered from the computer? This is never recommended.
Does the drive have a FireWire connection?

You might see if you can access the drive in a terminal
In a terminal, with the drive connected, enter the following two commands:

cd /Volumes
ls

You will see a list of available HDs. If you see your external drive listed, if the name is External for example, then enter the following command
cd External
and you should be inside the drive.
now enter
ls
and you should see the file system.

If you cannot see the drive this way, then download and burn to CD the Ubuntu Live CD OS from
Ubuntu.com
Boot into the Ubuntu CD by holding down "C" on boot, with CD inserted and then see if you can see the external drive.

I would add that you should get rid of the Maxtor ASAP and only use FireWire connections in the future. USB is really for keyboards and mice, etc. Many have found it to be unreliable for other devices.

Message was edited by: nerowolfe

Oct 16, 2008 2:52 PM in response to nerowolfe

thank you for all the advice...

I tried what you said with Terminal, but it didn't find something, it did show a folder which no longer exists on my computer though....

I am downloading ubuntu now, I'll try that as well...
I am surprised and frustrated with what happened... I thought that Maxtor was reliable.. Mind you, the disk was powered by the USB hub it was connected to for the majority of the time it was used...

the thought of losing all my work makes me shudder... though I do realize that that's most likely what's about to happen...

Oct 16, 2008 3:06 PM in response to memos

memos wrote:
thank you for all the advice...

I tried what you said with Terminal, but it didn't find something, it did show a folder which no longer exists on my computer though....

I am downloading ubuntu now, I'll try that as well...
I am surprised and frustrated with what happened... I thought that Maxtor was reliable.. Mind you, the disk was powered by the USB hub it was connected to for the majority of the time it was used...

the thought of losing all my work makes me shudder... though I do realize that that's most likely what's about to happen...


I have had perfect success with my LaCie d2 quadro drives. I have read bad reports about Maxtor and most of the issues I read here involving external drives are those using USB. There's a reason USB drives are cheaper than FW drives. In the long run they are much more expensive.
Reading these threads about all the problems with USB peripherals is enough to keep me from using USB for anything important, certainly never for a backup drive. Remember, USB came from the winders people and was "ported" to Apple machines for compatibility.

Message was edited by: nerowolfe

Nov 8, 2008 5:57 PM in response to memos

So is there anything else I could do at this point, or should I restore the disk and then try with "data rescue", "disk warrior" etc?

I mean after I restore it, rendering it mountable and readable, do I have any chance in finding some of my data with any of the restoring apps?

Help? Please?

Feb 23, 2009 7:53 AM in response to memos

I'm having a similar problem on my 1tb One Touch Plus 4. Was working totally fine w Firewire and USB for the last 3-4 months then this morning after turning on my laptop and HD it didn't pop up.

I can see it in Disk Utility and I've verified/repaired the disk via Disk Utility and nothing. I've tried to mount it in Terminal with the "diskutil mount" option and nothing. In Terminal running the "diskutil verifydisk" option it came up with an error.

It's formatted with Mac OS HFS+ with Journaling enabled. Isn't recognizable on a PC. Nothing out the ordinary other than maybe it's dusty or sth. Just shut down my computer at night then in the morning when I turned it on (HD was unplugged from the FW port after computer was shut down but not unplugged from ext power).

I'm not online with the computer and far from home so any help would be appreciated. Got a lot of data on the HD and want to make sure it can be retrieved. Thanks!

External Maxtor not readable anymore

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