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Level 1

1 points

Unable to mount External Hard drive

I have a 1TB Maxtor One Touch Plus 4 external hard drive that recently just went kaput on me.

Regular day - shut down the computer and unplugged the HD from the Firewire port (use it in FW & USB). Then the next day when I booted up it did not show up on the desktop.

Now I've spent some time in Terminal with diskutil and the GUI Disk Utility with not luck. I can see the Disk and the Volume I created within the disk but it will not mount. I verified/repaired the disk w/both the diskutil cmd & Disk Utility but it doesn't find anything wrong. Just won't mount.

Also tried Disk Warrior 4.1 but it doesn't even SEE the drive so that doesn't help.

I, in quite the "Zoolander" moment, tore apart (relatively carefully) the enclosure for the HD (there goes my warranty...) to verify it wasn't a hardware issue and it doesn't seem to be. Ordered another SATA enclosure so we'll see if that helps.

I'm far from home and don't have access to the internet via my Mac and no one else around has a Mac to try it on. It's formatted HFS + w/Journaling enabled. Model # ST31000340AS.

Any help would be appreciated. Lots of good data on this that I'd like to recover..

THANKS!

MacBook Pro 15.4" 2.0 ghz Intel, Mac OS X (10.5.6), G4 TiBook 867 mhz

Posted on Mar 3, 2009 9:52 AM

20 replies

Andreas

Level 4

1,510 points

Mar 12, 2009 11:49 AM in response to Neville Hillyer

I prefer Western Digital

Take care: have a look at DO NOT USE a ** WESTERN DIGITAL ** drive...

Andreas

Mar 12, 2009 12:42 PM in response to Andreas

I have added the following note to the CCC site:

"When describing these problems it may be helpful to separate disk drive issues from those of the the enclosure the drive is mounted in.

As I understand it there are compatibility problems with WD enclosures containing their drives.

I regularly use CCC with WD server quality (5 year guarantee) PATA drives without any difficulty and I am satisfied that these drives are some of the best available."

Andreas

Level 4

1,510 points

Mar 12, 2009 3:28 PM in response to Neville Hillyer

+...to which, at the CCC site, I replied:+

No disagreement, Neville, but do consider that technically savvy users such as you are in the minority. I hope you don't think we are wrong to warn users, the vast majority of whom are decidedly non-expert, without off-putting technicalities that WD now has on their site:

Q: Can I boot my computer system using an external (FireWire, USB, Combo) hard drive?
A: While it may be possible to boot your computer to an external hard drive, Western Digital does not provide technical support for booting your computer using an external hard drive . If you intend to make a copy of your boot drive, or install your operating system, please use a second internal drive (EIDE or Serial ATA), rather than an external drive. (My emphasis)

I feel I should emphasise that what WD says applies to THEIR drives.

Andreas

cleatus Author

Level 1

1 points

Mar 15, 2009 12:07 PM in response to cleatus

After all I've tried I've decided there's only 2 options left for me. 1. Try on another Mac (which will involve sending it back to the States) and/or 2. Get another 1TB HD and try to copy over the entire drive using cp in Terminal or making a Disk Image using Disk Utility.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions and advice!

cleatus Author

Level 1

1 points

Mar 15, 2009 12:10 PM in response to cleatus

Unable to mount External Hard drive