Do I need DiskWarrior?? Will it fix this problem?

This is not the sort of problem that DiskWarrior helps with. If the drive can't be mounted or erased, that's likely to be a hardware issue. Since you say the problem has occurred since swapping the drive, it's possible a cable was not attached securely. Check and make sure all connections are good. If that does not help, the drive may be bad. See if it works in an external enclosure.

Hey Chicago,

What Thomas said is true. Disk Warrior can test your dirve integrity to see if it is ok, but DW is more for reapiring and rebuilding directories which can sometimes be the source of issues with a Mac. I would uninstall the HD and re-install it, being very careful doing so. Making sure it is properly seated and check any cables. And as Thomans said the HD it self may be bad. DW is a very handly utiltiy to have on hand in any case. Hope this helps.

MacJoseph

One thing that confuses me is that my Mac can see the drive, just not mount it. Does this mean that it is connected Ok to mymac or do you still think that this is a connection issue.

I think it's more likely that the drive may be bad, but checking the connections is a cheap and easy (relatively) thing to try, and it could be the problem. If reconnecting all the cables solves the problem, that's a much better solution than having to return or replace the drive and install another new one.

Not only can Disk Warrior not help with this problem, it can't help with any problem if you have adequate backups, which you must have.

The only real use of Disk Warrior is to try to recover data from a damaged HFS volume that Disk Utility can't repair, and for which there are no backups. Make sure you're never in that situation, and you'll never need to waste money on Disk Warrior, despite the hucksterism with which it's promoted on this site by people who like to give advice but have no technical knowledge.

Those are strong words... a bit too strong, Linc. There are situations where restoring from backup would be preferable to attempting repairs, but the converse is also true. DiskWarrior is very good at what it does, and it's much faster and easier to repair a damaged volume than to restore from backups. And of course, none of that is at all relevant to a discussion of a newly-installed drive that is having apparent hardware issues.

There are situations where restoring from backup would be preferable to attempting repairs, but the converse is also true. DiskWarrior is very good at what it does, and it's much faster and easier to repair a damaged volume than to restore from backups.

Couldn't agree less. Any drive that throws a directory error not recoverable with Disk Utility should be retired.

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I have personally had drives that DiskWarrior was able to repair and that continued functioning perfectly for years afterward. Certainly, if Disk Utility can't repair it, that may mean the drive is failing, and it may mean that the data on that drive is so badly corrupted that you shouldn't bother with DiskWarrior. But it also may not.

Linc Davis wrote:

Any drive that throws a directory error not recoverable with Disk Utility should be retired.

I disagree. And so does Apple.

"If Disk Utility can’t repair your disk or reports 'The underlying task reported failure,' try to repair the disk again. If that doesn’t work, back up as much of your data as possible, reformat your disk, and restore your backed-up data. If you continue to have problems with your disk, it may be physically damaged and need to be replaced."

(from <http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=DiskUtility/11.5/en/7087.html>)

tomfromchicago wrote:

What would you do in such a situation?

Test the drive in a different computer.

If the drive is truly dead, there really isn't a good non-destructive way to permanently erase the data. Of course, recovery of data from such a drive isn't easy either, generally requiring a tear-down by a professional data recovery service, which generally costs 4 figures. Few thieves are going to pay such a sum to recover data from a drive that, for all they know, may just contain a bunch of family photos and uninteresting e-mails. They'll go for the easier drives that are still working.

Of course, if you have truly sensitive data in unencrypted form on that hard drive, and testing in a different computer or external enclosure shows that it is truly dead, you may be better off to just eat the loss and not try to return it. Smash it up with a sledgehammer or something. And in the future, anything on your hard drive that is truly sensitive should be encrypted!

I have just run disk warrior on a drive that Disk utility would not fix, it fixed it within 40 mins, it still wouldn't boot but I booted to the rescue partition and reinstalled mavericks now boots perfectly and no issues with response, this was not possible before Disk Warrior repaired it, things work as well as before if not a little quicker. Background is ... I came back to my 2009 Imac (4 days ago) after a power cut (not on UPS for a couple of days so just bad luck !) and it would not boot (at the time I was not logged in and no Apps were running on the MaC so it was virtually Idle, it is not encrypted and is a 2TB hitachi drive 14 months old fresh installed with mavericks and kept uptodate with all advised via auto update)) I ran disk utility from the mavericks repair drive, no good it hardly tried gave up after 5 mins. I booted from a 650G snow leopard drive (in a USB case) and ran Disk Util for 40 mins, gave various positive messages but still couldn't fix it (ran 3 times). I couldn't see the drive as it was somehow "locked " by OSX. Ive seen other thread reporting locked drives. It was not unlock-able from disk utility and non mountable. Disk warrior reported it was mounted read only, Disk Utility reported not mounted. In short out of the 30 times I have used Disk utility to try and repair a drive it has succeed just twice. On one occasion I ran disk Utility from Snow leopard on a Mountain Lion drive and it fixed the drive when the ML version gave up. Other occasions I have had to reformat and reinstall, several drive changes and fresh installs but symptoms all similar, But this takes up hours of effort and usually time machine doesn't offer a simple reinstall and takes a long time to restore 1TB. Why shouldn't we repair drives , I was nervous about disk warrior as there are so many disclaimers in the sales process it doesn't look worth it, but I based my decision on all the good feedback and now my feedback is also an excellent product, OK my hard disk may fail in the future but now I can make double sure Im backed up and buy a new drive at leisure. Quite why Apple OS seems to be susceptible to failing disks I dont know (this is my experience from IMAC and MAC Air since 2006). Used windows for 20 years never had a drive fail, Used Mac for 10 years drive fails every 18months including 2 WD mystudio drives, Perhaps a coincidence, who knows !

Thomas:

Another possibility is you could have a bad SATA cable. These are damaged quite easily.

You have not said what Year / model your macbook pro is, but you can get these SATA cables here. https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Mac/MacBook-Pro-13-Inch-Unibody-Mid-2012-Hard-Drive -Cable/IF163-041-1

You can search for your year of computer if this is not the cable.

Also here is a video about how the cable fails. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amg5w0rlwDo

Quite often the original hard drive will work with the cable, but the new SSD will not.