Not recognizing external hard drive

Anyone found a solution to this problem yet?

I have a 2 TB Seagate Goflex Desk Adapter USB 3.0, which I partitioned for time machine back up (1tb) and extra storage (1 tb) where I moved all my ebooks, photos and family home videos from last 15 years along with school files. My 2008 macbook was working just fine in backing up time machine and recogning the partition just fine till now where the external hdd light is on but neither system profiler or disk utility recognize the hdd. I'm in desperate need to find a solution without having to erase all my files. Some one help please!!!!

Thanks a bunch in advance 🙂

Have you tried it on another Mac? How about in a defferent case?

I have read through ALL of the replies and can't believe that Apple hasn't responded with a better solution. I have 5 MacBook Pros. I have dropped two that I worked on steadily and broke the screen on one. I have hooked up to an external monitor and have been running Time Machine to get my info off backing up to a WD 3TB external drive. It recognized it fine but would never do a full back up. I had to back up things manually taking forever. Then....it all the sudded decided it would no longer recognize. The reason I even bought this external drive is because the Seagate I had been using ALSO stopped being recognized (wish I would have saw this first). The only problem with the solutions that have been posted is that on my other Macs....they do recognize the drives. I was about to pay to have someone get the info off my Seagate and as a last chance effort plugged it in to one of the other Macs and there it is! I plugged in the WD and that Mac recognizes it too. So what is up???? Why on earth did this one stop recognizing. I hate to reformat the WD and lose everything (although I can with the Seagate). It obviously is not the power cord since other Macs that are running the same OS recognize. I am on Snow Leopard on a couple and Mountain Lion on two. But the Snow Leopard is on both the machines that DO and DONT recognize them. WTH????

As owner of nearly 100 hard drives, and used enough 1000s of them, everyone should remember 2 points for the future.

1. NEVER buy a western digital drive for your Mac, just dont do it.

2. Most of these HD new out of box are NOT FORMATTED for Mac OSX,.....erase any new out of box drive, and have it formatted as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)".

3. Most all external HD have very junk SATA connectors between them and the Mac,......if your drive all the sudden "isnt recognized" is far far more common than you realize, it doesnt indicate that either the HD is bad, OR your Mac has issues.... rather the SATA connector between the HD and Mac is fried. Good news is, cracking open an external HD and removing the HD and connecting it via a HD dock and 9 times out of 10, everything is "good to go". I recommend anyone who can, to own a HD dock.

4. Some HD are flakey and have "haunted" recognition issues when plugging them in. Many 2.5" HD (especially the larger ones, and the 'older' ones (older than a year or two) run on the razors edge for power as drained thru USB to get them working perfectly 100% of the time. Good news, the HD is ok, the Mac is ok, but the HD isnt getting enough power thru the USB. Seen this a 1000 times.

Lacie doesnt make Hard drives, they contain seagate inside. Toshiba doesnt make 2.5" hard drives, theyre made by Hitachi (same HD Apple uses inside their Macbook pro and Mac Mini).

It sounds like you're using one 3TB HD as the backup drive for five Macs. Bad idea putting all your eggs in one basket. I have two separate drives each for my two laptops. Each laptop has a drive for a daily backup and a separate drive for a weekly backup. In addition to this I have a drive on which I store my media plus a backup for that one.

At this point a Universal Drive Adapter might help the two Macs access the drive(s) they can't. OWC has a nice USB 3.0 version that can accommodate any SATA or IDE, 2.5", 3.5" or 5.25" drive.

I'd strongly recommend against using Time Machine as your only backup program. It has its good points but ease of recovering a complete backup isn't one of them. I'd strongly recommend using CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper (especially SuperDuper) for regular BOOTABLE backups. You can still run a TimeMachine backup, but I haven't found it to be all that reliable.

dxs309, It sounds like the flash drive was left formatted in FAT32 which has a 4GB file size limitation and is a Microsoft format. Not Apple's fault or problem. Reformat it as Mac OS Extended Journaled or exFAT and you'll be able to use it for larger files.

I haven't tried it in a different mac. I'm going to see if it'll work on my dad's pc and retrieve the files I have on there.

What is the universal adapter you had mentioned above? Will that help my mac access the drive?

I really appreciate your responses, you've been much more helpful than the guys at genius bar and Seagate 🙂

Be aware that PCs can't read Mac drives without special software installed.

The universal drive adapter will take any bare drive and allow you to connect it to your computer. You will have to remove the drive from the case in order to use it and it will allow you to determine if the case is the problem or if it is the drive itself.

Do you have any drive utility software like Disk Warrior or TechTool Pro?

Turns out the problem was the seagate case. I am retrieving my files as we speak and cannot wait to invest in a better external HDD. Thanks again for all your input and advise 🙂

PeachyOrange

Turns out the problem was the seagate case........cannot wait to invest in a better external HDD.

Proving what I said all along,.....Seagate however DOES NOT make the Sata connector/case, its 3rd party.

Seagate actually is #1 in 3.5" division HD,

Hitachi/Toshiba (same maker) is #1 in 2.5" class.

7 out of 10 times a hard drive dies AFTER 3 MONTHS (if a HD dies, its usually 3 months or less) , its not a bad HD, but a junky SATA connector attached to same to mate it with your computer.

You cant invest in a better 3.5" HD, Seagate is #1 in the 3.5" class. All HD are prone to failure, but all things being equal, Seagate is the best....

thats why APPLE STORES carry LaCie drives which contain 3.5" SEAGATE Hard drives. 😊

Hi, I recently switched from IBM PC to a MACbook air. I used a Seagate 320MB hard drive which I plugged straight into the Macbook Air and worked fine - I then foolishly disconnected the drive without ejecting it first and now the MAC says it's unreadable. It has also renamed the drive disk1 - none of the utilities for disks are available (greyed out) and I'm not sure what to do from here. Help!!

The Saint01, First off, did you reformat the drive with a Mac format or did you leave the drive formatted the way it was?

Hook the HD into another computer, such as the original IBM machine, offload ALL data. or another PC computer.......

Obviously your 320GB HD isnt a Mac formatted HD, ....you should have ejected the HD before removing it.

No worries, just offload the data on another PC machine. If you want to use it for a Mac, ONCE you save the data, goto disk utility, and format the HD for Mac OSX extended journaled, or Exfat if you want to use it on BOTH PC and Mac.

😊

PlotinusVeritas, thanks so much for your exceedingly helpful posts 🙂

My Macbook Pro was replaced under warranty about 8 weeks ago, but the "new" (?reconditioned?) one is glitching / shutting down, so I haven't transferred the data onto it off my external hard drive. It was reading my HD fine, but all of a sudden it won't recognise it at all.

I plugged the HD into my flatmate's Macbook Pro, and it won't recognise the drive either. I tried my (very) old PC laptop, and again no joy. The drive is making the right noises / lights are flashing, so it looks like its working.

Is there anything I can do to get the data off the HD? I need it pretty urgently as all my work stuff is on there. I'm feeling like an absolute dill for not doing a 2nd backup! Also, I am looking at new HDs now. I noted that you say to avoid WD and Seagate (thank you!). The Amazon reviews for Samsung are good (once it's been reformatted) - would that sound like a reasonable make to you?

Thanks so much for your help!

Meg

ps I'm looking at HD docks on Amazon, as you mention that the SATA connector is likely to be what is fried. I have no idea what I'm looking for! Am I daft if I try to buy a HD dock and crack open the HD myself, or is it pretty simple? Should I just go find a professional (as the data on the HD is very important - ie can i screw this up easily?)?

Thank you again 🙂

Meg