Not recognizing external hard drive

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

Megsidreams

My Macbook Pro was replaced under warranty about 8 weeks ago,.....HD wont work...Is there anything I can do to get the data off the HD?

Since you just got it back, make an appt with Apple again to report your "glitchy" replacement is bad ....for evaluation / repair.

Samsung was acquired by Seagate in 2011, and yes those drives are very reliable and generally loved by those running server farms who see 1000s of HD and know well what is "crashing too often"

I never said "avoid Seagate", however their 2.5" havent fared that well in large sampling. I was speaking of the bad SATA connector attached to same on an external 3.5" which can go bad.

However in 2.5" #1 is still Hitachi/Toshiba.

Best recommendation would be a Toshiba 2.5" USB 1TB or 1.5TB, however right now the 2TB 4 platter 15.2mm Toshiba USB 3.0 are going for $120US

The cheapest (currently) best price for QUALITY 2.5" USB HD is running $65 per Terabyte. However it seems youre in the U.K., I dont know what you pay for same.

As for getting data of your HD you have software recovery options, and worst of all (due to price) are recovery teams that charge a rather lot to do same. Check into HD recovery applications on same.

In the future never never trust any backup, even the best crash and fail, always have 2 backups.

Never consider any computer a data storage device, rather a data creation ,sending, and manipulation device. Anyone who thinks data is safe on any computer, even copied upon multiple partitions is making a mistake.

Never backup your data exclusively upon magnetic hard drives or flash storage, nor consider same since magnetic storage degrades over time even under ideal conditions.

Store important data on multiple servers on multiple continents.

Burn important data onto multiple copies of archival DVDs and store same in cool dark fireproof safes, multiple places.

Don’t burn data onto junk DVD’s purchased from consumer level electronics stores. These are not archival long life DVD’s nor reliable, nor trustworthy. Archival DVD blanks such as Taiyo Yuden, rated for 100+ years are what the pros use, these are made by JVC and are professional grade DVD blanks.

Most people have never heard of archival DVDs, however their cost is only 30% more than junk-level DVD blanks which are only rated for 5-10 years. Also the reject rate on the inferior DVD is around 15%, the cost is almost identical between the WORST DVD blanks and the BEST DVD blanks (go figure!)

Most importantly know that 2 copies of your data is 1, and 1 is none, and 1000 copies stored in one place or building, is also the same as none due to possible fire.

Always consider and expect your computer’s hard drive to completely crash anytime, at all times, and you should keep a cloned and updated hard drive handy at all times to return to immediate productivity and utterly avoid programs and parameter reinstallation. Nothing is quicker than taking out a dead HD and tossing in a new updated cloned HD for getting back to 100% in under 20 mins!