Hard drive is not showing up in disk utility

Some people seem to have a problem with a cable, sure, turn off your Mac and change the cable to see if that resolves the problem for you.

If you plug in your drive and it doesn't appear and it's not a broken cable though, what next.

If a problem is detected with your drive, your Mac will try to repair that problem so you can access it. If you are an inexperienced user, then follow the advice here and go see your local genius. If that's impossible, or you know what you are doing, then this may solve your issue as it solved mine. Step by step.

1. When you plug in your drive, go make a cup of coffee, be patient... give it 15 minutes, better still 30 minutes before proceeding.

2. After waiting a while and the drive is still not mounted or in disk utility, do the following.

3. Open a command terminal and enter the following command:

ps -ef|grep fsck|grep -v grep

You should see something like this output if your mac is attempting a repair...

0 378 84 0 10:43AM ?? 1:34.68 /System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/Contents/Resources/./fsck_hfs -y /dev/disk2s2

The second number, in this case "378" is the process id (PID) of the process that is attempting a repair on your disk

Now type the following, of course replacing the PID with your own output...

sudo kill -9 378

You will be asked for your password to execute the command.

4. Repeat step 3 again, as it will try to respawn one time and will have a new PID for you to kill, repeat again if necessary, in my case it was twice.

5. when you enter "ps -ef|grep fsck|grep -v grep" and get no output, open "disk utility" again and you should be able to see your drive, it will be mounted "read only"

6. Copy your important data from that drive to another location, i.e. another drive or a temporary folder on your system drive if you have enough space.

7. In "disk utility" select "erase" on the drive that couldn't be repaired... Warning, you will loose all data from the drive, so double check that you have your backup from step 6. Once "erase" (or formatting) is complete, you can copy your files back again.

Hope that helps some of you 😀

Which os do you have?

Sounds like you have directory damage that Disk Utility is too weak to repair. You will need a stronger 3rd party utility.

Resources:

DiskWarrior Highly recommended for *directory damage* repairs.

TechTool Pro Multi-functional utility.

Drive Genius Multi-functional utility.

You will need to make your own decision on which to purchase. Read up on them on their websites because each does something a little different.

cant thank you enough. my sata cable was loose and I was able to restore my laptop just a few minutes of time. If I had taken this to my companies helpdesk they would have reimage the machine and give me a new hard drive and cost me at least weeks of time. And some of the files and it was gotten back. Thanks again

Hard to tell. If neither the old, nor the new hard drive is detected, then it's unlikely the drive is the problem. Make an appointment, take it to Apple Store.

For a price, everything is fixable. Then again, it could be as simple as a loose connection.

Apple stores in your area? If not, there's gotta be an Authorized Service Provider somewhere nearby.

Raotr, et. al.

I realize that this is an older thread, but as I had this problem and fixed it this morning: I wanted to share my solution.

I think that the Mac Genius Desk is often an awesome utility, but if you aren't terrified of your Big Google Box (as opposed to your pocket-sized Google Box), then try this simple hardware troubleshoot first. It might save you time and money.

For a total of $0 I was able to get my HD to magically reappear.

1. I opened the computer. (Of course, turn it off.)

2. I unplugged the hard drive. (Should go without saying to discharge the static electricity by touching metal frame of your Mac)

3. I replugged the hard drive.

4. I hit the power button.

5. Voila!

OF COURSE, some SATA cables do go bad, and that really may have been the case with Foxmouth's aluminum warrior. However, SATA cables also can be jarred loose, especially in laptops. It seems much more likely that a connection that is designed to be easily disconnected can loosen then that a specially engineered piece of hardware suffers an internal malfunction doing exactly what it was designed to do.

So it goes

My MacBook is out of the one year warranty so I'm not sure how much the apple store would charge to fix this.

Did you purchase with Credit Card? Most Amex, VISA and MasterCards have some form of purchase protectin plan which usually extends your original warrantly by a year or so. It's not as straightforward as AppleCare by it this turns out to be a serious hardware issue then it would save you a lot of money.

Keep this option in mind and if it comes to repair time consult your CC company.

Awesome, thanks for replying so quickly!

I may try to just see if it's a connection problem first then. I still am under the Best Buy protection plan, but a lot of times, they have to ship it off for two weeks to fix it and I can't wait on that. Sounds like taking it to the Apple store might be a pretty good option though!

Thank you!!

This is a problem I am having and that I am reading about all over the web. Happened to me 2 days after my warranty expired. I am certain Apple knows the cause and the solution but it appears they are not addressing it publicly. Guess I'll go back to a PC.

raotr,

Your problem may be like the OP's - a bad SATA cable. If you're handy you can replace it yourself. Just make certain that you get the correct part number for your model and you can find them on eBay.

Clinton

So, I was wrong.

I thought that fiddling with my SATA cable would do the trick, but the problem resurfaced. I took it to the Genius Bar and voila! My SATA cable needed replacing. After an hour it was back to normal and even better than before.

I asked the Genius Bar Genius (???) why this problem occurred and why it seems to show up often. The hard drive is placed right underneath the right wrist if you're typing on a MBP from this era. This happens to be the place where a lot of right-handed people pick up their computers. This puts a lot of crushing pressure on the SATA cable.

It can operate for a period of time with slight damage, but things start to fail and performance is compromised. Having problems with your Library? Find that the computer will suddenly stop allowing you to save? Getting weird messages from princes in African countries who need your bank account number to free their ancient jewels? These could be signs that your SATA cable has become senile or may be suffering from dementia.

There is a fix and I can affirm that it cost less than $60.

-So it goes

Same thing has happened to me, just bought a new hd and now i am sitting here rethinking whether i should ever buy a mac again. I have lost all my data. There was no sign or diagnostics indications or anything.

Make sure whichever utility you purchase that it is compatible with Snow Leopard.

If as he indicated, the new hard drive doesn't show up in disk utility either, then it's unlikely to be a damaged file/directory structure.