External Disk Not Recognized

Rfamilie wrote:

My LaCie 4T external hard drive is not recognized. Using disk repair to mount the disk failed with the following message: Could not mount “Medias3”. (com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error 49244.).

First Aid also failed: "Invalid node structure. Invalid sibling link. Rebuilding catalogue B-tree. The volume Medias3 could not be repaired. File system check exit code is 8. Restoring the original state found as unmounted. File system verify or repair failed.: (-69845)"

Media 3 info:

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/7df21b7d-4d30-43ee-85d4-ba18bce1d8ac

The external disk has all my photography work on it (13 years!) What can and/or should be done? Thank you.

sounds like the drive has failed.

Drives can fail at anytime, even brand new out of the box. 13 years! sounds like you have been on borrowed time...

If you value your user data

3-2-1 Backup Strategy: three copies of your data, two different methods, and one offsite.

More than one device, more than one backup methodology.

Since your external drive is HFS+, you can try using Alsoft's Disk Warrior to recover. Disk Warrior is probably the best tool for recovering from file system damage.

If it is the HARDWARE that has failed, it is less likely that a tool like Disk Warrior can recover your files, but it might be able to get your disk back up in some sort of compromised state from which you could try to copy what you can. If it is indeed HARDWARE then a file recovery service is the next option, which can cost hundreds if not thousands of $. However a file recovery service might succeed because your drive is a mechanical hard drive; a solid state device would probably not be recoverable at all in the event of hardware failure.