Ohlesfamily wrote:
Thanks Pondini! Replugged and jiggled and now the drive shows up in Disk Utility, but all four repair options are grayed out. At the bottom the partition map scheme reads: Unformatted. Could this be as bad as it sounds?
Yup. 😟
If it just has Time Machine backups on it, you can try to reformat it (see #5 in the
Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum, for instructions).
If it has valuable data that's not backed-up elsewhere (large mistake, obviously), you need specialized +Data Recovery+ software, or a service that performs the function. It's not cheap, and there are no guarantees.
The app mentioned here most often is +Data Rescue 3,+ but I haven't used it myself, so can't recommend it over any of the others (Data Rescue 2 may be compatible with Leopard).
Some of these have a free "trial mode," that will tell you if there's anything to be recovered, and perhaps recover a single file. For more, you have to pay the $$.
You'll also need another drive to receive anything it can recover.
Look for apps or services under +Data Recovery+ via Google, VersionTracker.com, or MacUpdate.com.
