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

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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

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Answer 1

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 20, 2011 4:03 PM in response to Nathan Miah

It sounds like there's a serious problem with the drive.

See what it shows for Partition Map Scheme when you click the top line, and for Format when you click the indented one.

Repairing the actual Drive on Lion seems to repair the partition map only, not and of the partitions.

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Answer 2

Nathan Miah Author

Level 1

80 points

Jul 20, 2011 4:07 PM in response to Pondini

Partition Map Scheme : GUID Partition Table

That's what it says when I click the top one.

Format : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

That is what it says for the indented one.

Just as a side note: I've been using this drive since about October 2010 with Snow Leopard with no issues.

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Answer 3

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 20, 2011 4:12 PM in response to Nathan Miah

Odd. Does it show reasonable figures for Capacity, Available, and Used?

Can you post a screenshot? Maybe a clue will leap out at me. 😉

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Answer 4

Nathan Miah Author

Level 1

80 points

Jul 20, 2011 4:17 PM in response to Pondini

It shows me the capacity, but used and available have a '-' next to them.

This screenshot shows the top line.

And this one shows the indented one.

Hope these help 🙂

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Answer 5

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 20, 2011 4:22 PM in response to Nathan Miah

You may have done this (in the other thread), but try ejecting, disconnecting, and powering it down for several minutes.

Restart your Mac and try again.

If that doesn't help, it does look like your backups are corrupted, beyond OSX's ability to even see them. 😟

There's a slim chance a 3rd-party disk repair app such as DiskWarrior can fix it, but DW is about $100, and there's no guarantee. If you do try DW or other, be sure it's compatible with Lion.

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Answer 6

Nathan Miah Author

Level 1

80 points

Jul 20, 2011 4:27 PM in response to Pondini

That doesn't sound good. I've done those steps before but I'll give them another go. I just don't understand how the drive can be working today under Snow Leopard, and then I left it in whilst upgrading to Lion, and then it not be working?

Just out of interest, I just clicked 'Eject' on the drive in Disk Utility and was presetned with the message: "The Disk 'WD My Passport 017A Media' could not be unmounted. Please make sure all applications and files are closed on this disk." I'm not using any files or applications on the disk though. Is this any help to you?

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Answer 7

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 20, 2011 4:29 PM in response to Nathan Miah

Power your Mac down, then disconnect it.

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Answer 8

Nathan Miah Author

Level 1

80 points

Jul 20, 2011 4:40 PM in response to Pondini

OK so I've restarted my Mac and Time Machine Backups is still greyed out in Disk Utility. Is there absolutely anything else I could do to sort this such as phone Apple Support or maybe install Snow Leopard using the disc it came on with my Mac and just set it up from a Time Machine Backup on my external hard drive (since it works under SL)?

It's not just backups on the drive either, there are other important things on there, so why won't they show?

I just really don't understand how this happened. Could it not be an issue with WD because they haven't issued firmware to support Lion yet? I just really don't want to have to lose everything on my drive.

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Answer 9

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 20, 2011 4:53 PM in response to Nathan Miah

Nathan Miah wrote:

. . .

Is there absolutely anything else I could do to sort this such as phone Apple Support

If you want.

or maybe install Snow Leopard using the disc it came on with my Mac and just set it up from a Time Machine Backup on my external hard drive (since it works under SL)?

Did you install Lion on an empty partition, or did you upgrade Snow Leopard? If you upgraded, I'd not recommend erasing it, since your backups are apparently gone. It's doubtful Snow Leopard will recognize them.

It's not just backups on the drive either, there are other important things on there, so why won't they show?

Mixing Time Machine backups and other data is not a good idea. See #3 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions. It sounds like the whole disk is corrupted.

I just really don't understand how this happened. Could it not be an issue with WD because they haven't issued firmware to support Lion yet?

If this is a simple external HD, connected by USB or FireWire, no, unless you installed some of WD's software on it. That shouldn't prevent it from being seen at all, but anything's possible.

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Answer 10

Nathan Miah Author

Level 1

80 points

Jul 20, 2011 5:03 PM in response to Pondini

Thanks for all your help Pondini.

I will phone Apple tomorrow and if they are unable to help me then I will just have to accept that I have lost everything on that drive and create a partition so I can use it as storage and backup 😟😟

I wish I'd never upgraded to Lion now.

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Answer 11

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 20, 2011 5:06 PM in response to Nathan Miah

If the drive is hosed, you might be able to recover some of the data, but it won't be cheap or easy. See Data Recovery.

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Answer 12

Rod Hagen

Level 7

32,000 points

Jul 20, 2011 5:08 PM in response to Nathan Miah

Hi Nathan,

If you boot from your Snow Leopard DVD (DVD in drive, restart holding down the option key, select the SL DVD as the OS to boot from and click on the arrow) and then use the Snow Leopard version of disc utility, does this change the repair options, or provide any further info re the problem TM partition?

It sounds as if your problem is actually caused by a corrupted partition map, in which case one of the "stronger" repair utilities like DiskWarrior or Drive Genius may well be able to recover the partition in its entirety. Alternatively a "Data recovery" utility like Prosoft's "Data Rescue" may well be able to recover your data.

Message was edited by: Rod Hagen

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Answer 13

MGA321

Level 1

19 points

Jul 21, 2011 12:26 PM in response to Nathan Miah

I had the same problem and solved it by restarting and pressing and holding the command+option+P+R keys simultaneously before the apple logo appears. Release the keys after the second or third chime. Hopefully your drive will mount after doing this.

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