Unable to mount External Hard drive

Question

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

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Answer 1

Mar 3, 2009 9:55 AM in response to cleatus

So disk utility shows nothing is wrong and shows that it is mounted?

In Disk utility, what happens when you click the mount button when the drive is selected?

In Finder preferences, do you have "Show these items: External Disks" checked?

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Answer 2

Mar 4, 2009 2:04 AM in response to cleatus

Hi cleatus-

Will it work on another Mac?

It sounds like the external power supply brick could be faulty.

Luck-

-DP

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Answer 3

Worm76

Level 2

265 points

Mar 4, 2009 2:32 AM in response to cleatus

Try resetting the PRAM (if you haven´t already)

This might not work, but i would give it a try.

In the Terminal, can you see the disk if you:
"diskutil list"?

If you can, try to "cd" to the drive and/or " cp (path to disk) (path to new back up disk)"

Best o´luck

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Answer 4

cleatus Author

Level 1

1 points

Mar 6, 2009 7:45 AM in response to Justin Andrews

No - the Disk and Volume appear in Disk Utility but the volume name is grayed out. When I attempt to mount the drive/Volume it says there's an error (no specific code) and to try and repair with First Aid. When I run "Verify Disk" it shows no problems.

Haven't checked the Finder Prefs. Will do that. Thx.

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Answer 5

cleatus Author

Level 1

1 points

Mar 6, 2009 7:47 AM in response to DaddyPaycheck

Argh! Were that I could try! I'm not at home and wont be for a while and no one that I know where I'm working has a Mac.

I just received my new SATA enclosure and popped the drive in and have the same results...

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Answer 6

cleatus Author

Level 1

1 points

Mar 6, 2009 7:56 AM in response to Worm76

Haven't tried to reset PRAM - will do.

Yes I can see the disk and Volume using "diskutil list". Can't "cd" to the disk though because it's not mounted. It's location is /dev/disk1s. Without mounting the drive I don't think it's possible to do much.

On the "cp" that's a good idea. Unfortunately I only have 250 gb on my internal HD and my external is a 1TB. I have about 700 gb of data on the drive but I can't see any of it so I'd have to copy the whole HD to another 1TB.

Thought about doing pretty much the same thing with Disk Utility and creating a disk image.

Thanks for the help.

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Answer 7

Worm76

Level 2

265 points

Mar 6, 2009 9:36 AM in response to cleatus

If you see it on the "diskutil list", are you able to mount it with "diskutil mount [IDENTIFIER]"?

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Answer 8

Mar 6, 2009 9:37 AM in response to cleatus

I apologise in advance for this unhelpful negative note.

It is not clear that there is a fault with this drive but I always advise buying disks with a 5 year guarantee. This usually implies server quality drives but they are often not much more expensive. I prefer Western Digital but I also use Seagate.

Whilst Maxtor is now owned by Seagate they are at the cheapest end of their range and probably have poor guarantees. The temperature limitations alone on some Maxtor drives makes them very unreliable unless used in an air conditioned environment. They may not survive UK summer temperatures unless specially cooled!

This advice will probably help others more than you.

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Answer 9

Mar 6, 2009 9:42 AM in response to DaddyPaycheck

I'm having the same problem as the OP, but it works when I plug it into another Macbook. Whats going on?

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Answer 10

Mar 6, 2009 9:54 AM in response to cleatus

I had the same problem as you, it wouldn't mount on my computer, so I plugged it into my girlfriend's MacBook (it worked), I verified it in disk utility, it said everything was okay, I ejected it and plugged it into my MacBook, and then it worked. Hopefully it works for you too!

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Answer 11

Mar 6, 2009 9:54 AM in response to jacobsewell

Do you have the same drive as the OP?

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Answer 12

Mar 6, 2009 9:55 AM in response to jacobsewell

He only has one Mac!

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Answer 13

Mar 6, 2009 10:29 AM in response to Neville Hillyer

Well, thats ok, because my fix didn't work anyways. But I do have a real fix this time!

What you need to do is go here and download the fix for whatever version of OSX you are running: http://developer.apple.com/hardwaredrivers/download/usbdebug.html

So far its working for me, just watched a video off my external HDD and it didn't unmount itself.

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Answer 14

cleatus Author

Level 1

1 points

Mar 8, 2009 6:02 AM in response to Worm76

Yes, I tried. Came up with an error reading sth like:

"Disk Management setuid - error"

Or sth along those lines. "setuid" for sure was in there. Gonna try the DL from the ADC site linked in another reply. Hopefully that'll help

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Answer 15

cleatus Author

Level 1

1 points

Mar 8, 2009 6:13 AM in response to jacobsewell

Hey thanks for this. Just DL it (had to sign up with the ADC though I'm not so much a developer...) and I'll try it out. The fact that you drive worked on another Mac is an uplifting thought though.

I was just about ready to send off my HD to a friend but it'd take some time in transit. Crossing my fingers!

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