Trying to recover an External HDD that doesn't show up in finder, help is appreciated

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Level 1

5 points

Trying to recover an External HDD that doesn't show up in finder, help is appreciated

Hi guys & girls,

I hope this is in the right section of the forum. I've been using an Iomega Black Belt 1 TB external harddrive (specifically for Mac) for my time-machine backups for about half a year now.

I have pretty much always been able to maintain the good habit of firstly removing the drive via finder, then unplugging the chord. Though I kinda messed up yesterday, and it seems to be the cause of my disk not being recognized in finder.

It is being recognized by the disk utility, so I checked it for errors. Disk Utility says it should be recovered, by I'm not sure if it's actually doing what it's supposed to..:

* The first red message says "error: this disk needs to be recovered. Click "recover disk"

* Then it says, under the second bold text "recovery of the volume completed"

The thing now is that it seemed to take hours, I even left it on overnight but when I woke up DU was still checking (the bar in the right-below corner).

So I stopped the check (red text), but it keeps "checking & recovering" without stopping.

- Can this process really take hours and hours to complete?

I've also been getting the message that I should replace my battery. This turned out to be solveable by doing regular callibrations of the battery, it just needed to 'see' that there was enough capacity left in the battery. Now this iomega disk runs purely off the USB buss. Might this have anything to do with it?

It seems far-fetched, but I want to rule out as much as possible.

Any help in solving this is much appreciated! The disk always worked fine and I bought it less than a year ago, it's also got a 3 year warranty and is supposed to be very, very sturdy. So if it's a hardware failure there's an option to return it.

Many thanks,

Paul

Macbook Pro 13" 2.53 ghz intel core2duo

Posted on Feb 5, 2012 4:58 AM

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Answer 1

verv.paulus Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 5, 2012 6:48 AM in response to verv.paulus

Ok, so after some time I got the following message:

* Translation of the popup box:

"Disk Utility stopped recovery iomega_HD. Disk Utility cannot recover this disk. Make a spare copy of as much files as possible, format the disk again and then put the files back".

Putting files back is not necesary, as it's my Time Machine backup disk and I just use it to have a guaranteed 'undo' option.

* The weird thing is: when I got this message, as you can see, the disk was recognized again. Therefore it was visible in Finder, where I removed it. I plugged it in again, and the problem I had was still there. Now I'm back to recovering the disk as shown in the image in my first post.

Is the only option to format the disk, as the popup states? I'm not an expert but could my problems be solved without something rigourous as formatting the disk? After all, after the test the disk was visible again..

Thanks.. !

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Answer 2

verv.paulus Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 5, 2012 9:48 AM in response to verv.paulus

Another odd thing: with the screenshot above, although it says the disk isn't recoverable, after I see that screen is the only time that I am able to acces the disk via finder. This is what I see:

The 'damaged files' folder is new to me. As you can see in the screenshot in the post above this one, you'll see that now all the information at the botom is visible.. and it seems to be perfectly fine. I find that a bit strange; as a layman I'd say there's not much wrong with the disk.. so I hesitate to format it.

If I would remove the disk via Finder and then re-plug it, I'm affraid I'll still have the same problem. I'm going to try rebooting now with the disk attached, to see if that helps.

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Answer 3

verv.paulus Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 5, 2012 2:09 PM in response to verv.paulus

Again an update. I managed to get a recovery process going that actually showed that it was doing work: Disk Utility showed me details and I saw the bar progressing slowly - unlike before.

This is the result after several hours of trying to repair it:

The main thing that keeps popping up is the "incorrect number of threadrecords" error.

The highlighted message reads: "there were 3 attemps made to repair the volume 'Iomega_hdd', but they failed". The last error message in bold red reads the same conclusion as it did two posts above:

"Disk Utility stopped recovery iomega_HD. Disk Utility cannot recover this disk. Make a spare copy of as much files as possible, format the disk again and then put the files back".

So.. am I correct to think that it's starting to look like I'm going to have to delete the entire disk?..

Thanks..

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Answer 4

X423424X

Level 6

14,265 points

Feb 5, 2012 4:25 PM in response to verv.paulus

IMO grab as much as you can off that drive on to another because I think it is failing. Just because you can see a file in the finder is no guarantee that file can be used in its entirety. You would probably this out on your own when trying to drag stuff off that drive on to another.

You could try recovering it with Disk Warrior but I don't think there's much hope.

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Answer 5

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Feb 5, 2012 4:59 PM in response to verv.paulus

The disk may be failing, but all we know right now is that the file system on it is corrupted beyond Disk Utility's ability to repair it.

A heavy-duty 3rd-party disk repair app may be able to fix it. DiskWarrior is usually thought to be the "gold standard" of such apps, but it costs about $100 U.S., and there's no guarantee. There are other such apps, some less expensive.

Your only other option is to erase it and let Time Machine start fresh. 😟 If you decide to do that, take the time to click the Security Options button, then Zero Out Disk. That will take quite a while, as it writes zeros to the entire disk, but if it fails, you know the disk has failed. If it succeeds, the disk may be ok -- you won't know until you use it for a while.

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Answer 6

verv.paulus Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 9, 2012 2:21 PM in response to Pondini

Thanks for both your suggestions. I decided to format it using Iomega's link: https://iomega-na-en.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/19614

It seems to be working fine now..

I was a bit reluctant to format it, as it seemed a rather extreme and final solution, but I guess that's what helps when you want to fix a seemingsly healthy disk (hardware-wise) that has some messed up configurations. Hope it stays like this.

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