External harddrive sounds like it's working but can't be seen at all

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External harddrive sounds like it's working but can't be seen at all

I have a Maxtor One Touch II 300gb firewire/USB external drive that worked fine the last time I used it, now I cannot get my Mac to recognize it. I have tried multiple cables, both firewire and usb; I've tried it on 3 different macs and a PC, I've bought a new powercord for the drive itself. The drive spins up and you can hear it engage (click) like it normally would when functioning properly; all lights on, etc. The drive does not show up on the desktop, system profiler, Disk Utility, nor can a variety of Terminal commands trick it into being seen. There are files of importance, obviously, on this drive so I can't just shrug it off. Does anyone have any other ideas on what might work, or something I may have missed? Of note: I have gone through a slew of threads and none seem to address my specific problem; and the ones that are close, I have tried their suggestions (as listed above). Thank you

G4, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Feb 3, 2012 9:49 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 3, 2012 11:36 PM in response to wytshark

As I see, this is a powered external drive, i.e. takes power from a power supply, therefore lack of energy cannot be suspicioned as the cause. If does not work with several macs and PCs, and changing cables does not solve the issue, then:

- damaged controller; this would be the serene case, because, if you move the disk to another enclosure, it will work, try to do that; you may find cheap enclosures, which may be used anyway with any disk.

- damaged disk; this is the worst scenario, because you must recover data, which is theoretically possibly, but noone can guess whether entirely or partially.

With these 2 basic scenarios in mind, try to find which solves your issue.

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