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Level 1

80 points

Since upgrading to Lion I can no longer mount my external hard drive

I backed up about 10 minutes before installing Lion when I was on Snow Leopard. I know my drive works fine and there are no issues with it.

However, when Lion was installed, I wanted to perform a Time Machine Backup, but it said my backup disk was unavailable. I checked in the Finder and it wasn't showing up in the side bar, even though it was connected to my Mac and the indicator light on the hard drive itself was flashing - suggesting drive activity. I can also hear the drive spinning.

I opened Disk Utility and the external hard drive appears in the side bar and it says 'WD My Passport 071A Media'. Underneath that is the 'Time Machine Backups' drive which is greyed out. I have tried right clicking on it and choosing Mount but it won't mount, and I have also tried Repair Disk which doesn't finish, but also doesn't report any errors either. If I run Verify Disk and Repair Disk on the 'WD My Passport 071A Media' drive (which is the same drive) it does not report any problems and says the drive is working fine.

I have tried updating the drive's firmware and using different ports but neither have worked. I have also tried rebooting my Mac.

I really need to use this drive to backup and I can't format it because I can't afford to lose any data on there. Could someone please give me some advice or tell me how to fix this? I would appreciate it so much.

Thanks,

Nathan

MacBook Pro 15" (Mid 2010) 2.4GHz Core i5, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, Mac OS X (10.6.6), iPod touch 32GB (3rd Generation)

Posted on Jul 20, 2011 2:58 PM

24 replies

Nathan Miah Author

Level 1

80 points

Jul 22, 2011 6:17 AM in response to MrJeypi

OK so, I have fixed this issue. Fixed is a bit of an overstatement though. I took Rod Hagen's advice and used Data Rescue which was able to recover everything from my external hard drive. However, for some reason it all added up to 3.1TB even though my drive is only 1TB. So, I had to pick and choose what to reover. I chose all the files that I stored on there, plus my backups. I then had to copy them to another external hard drive because I didn't have enough space on my internal hard drive. I erased and reformatted my primary external drive and created a partition so I could use half the drive for storage and the other half for backups, since Pondini said it is unwise to use one partition for both storage and backups. Then I had to copy all the data back from the secondary external drive back to the correct partitions on my primary external drive.

However, even though I copied my previous backups, Time Machine did not acknowledge they were there and began backing up from yesterday. Consequently I was forced to delete my previous backups which means I have lost EVERYTHING from February up until now.

Unfortunately, I did not see MGA321's post about holding down certain keys during a reboot until after I had started the data recovery process. I wish I had seen his post because it could have saved me about 30 hours.

I realise that mine isn't an elegant solution but it is the only way I found to do it after scouring the internet over and over.

If anyone has a better solution for other users having this issue, please post here because I know how frustrating this was for me and I don't want other users to have to suffer like I did. I hope Apple fixes this very serious bug.

Thanks Apple, all my backed up data is gone and you ruined my external hard drive.

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 22, 2011 6:49 AM in response to Nathan Miah

Nathan Miah wrote:

. . .

However, for some reason it all added up to 3.1TB even though my drive is only 1TB.

Your backups had several versions of files that had been changed.

However, even though I copied my previous backups, Time Machine did not acknowledge they were there and began backing up from yesterday.

The old backups weren't recognized, since they were no longer in the original structure.

Thanks Apple, all my backed up data is gone and you ruined my external hard drive.

No. Software cannot break an external HD. There may have been more strain on it than usual, so it could have been "the straw that broke the camel's back," or just pure coincidence. All hardware, including all hard drives, fail sooner or later. You just happened to be the unlucky guy it happened to at the same time you upgraded.

Nathan Miah Author

Level 1

80 points

Jul 22, 2011 7:10 AM in response to Pondini

Pondini, I refuse to believe that my hard drive failed because it was working mere moments before I upgraded to Lion.

Like you said, it could be coincidence that my drive experienced issues at the moment that I upgraded but I think it is a pretty big coincidence and I think it's very unlikely. I think Lion had something do to with this.

Thanks for breaking down my posts and replying, however. I really appreciate it 🙂

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 22, 2011 7:12 AM in response to Nathan Miah

And when you meet someone with the same birthday as you, will you refuse to believe that's a coincidence, too?

Both happen now and then.

Aug 9, 2011 10:01 AM in response to Pondini

My external drive works fine on my PC's and worked just fine before upgrading to Lion. Now I am unable to save anything to my drive. It's like it's locked up.

waxwing

Level 1

15 points

Aug 12, 2011 9:47 AM in response to Stephen4114

Personally, I think something else is going on here. Since I upgraded to Lion my SuperDrive and USB flash drives don't auto mount. I have to go into Disk Utility everytime I insert a CD or thumb drive and mount it.

pan0s

Level 1

0 points

Oct 14, 2011 9:32 AM in response to Pondini

Dear Pondini I suggest you take a good look in Google and your forums too just to realize how many people have the same problem after updating to Lion. All these people had accidentaly damaged disks?

Some months after this problem still exists and nobody Apple or WD gave any solution.

I also posted through my profile this problem to your forum and nobody answered. Never.

So dissapointed !!!

Nathan Miah Author

Level 1

80 points

Oct 14, 2011 12:47 PM in response to pan0s

The only solution I found was to reformat my hard drive. If this doesn't work I would recommend reinstalling Lion. I had a few other issues with my stuff since upgrading to Lion and since I did a fresh install of it, all those issues have gone.

jstotts

Level 1

4 points

Oct 16, 2011 5:05 PM in response to MGA321

I had the same issue as the OP, and MGA321's suggestion of resetting the PRAM worked for me. The drive now successfully mounts like normal.

Since upgrading to Lion I can no longer mount my external hard drive