external hard drive not mounting

Try the other USB port. That one has all the other devices -- the keyboard, trackpad, Bluetooth, and the facetime camera on it already.

A drive as large as 1TB ought to have its own external power supply to be really reliable.

Try going to Disk Utility and see if it shows up there. If it shows up you can try mounting it there or running a repair on it with Disk Utilties Disk Repair. Do you have any other repair utilties like DiskWarrior or TechToolPro?

Malaya10 wrote:

Hi Dale,

Thanks for taking the time to help a newbie.

Oh, no problem! Hope I can help.

The drive doesn't show up on Disk Utility. Does this mean I'm screwed?

Not sure yet.

Malaya10 wrote:

On the other hand, it shows up in System Information --> Hardware --> USB. Does this mean anything?

Hmmm......

Well, try things in this article on USB device issues.

Let us know if you have any luck. Will your ext. drive hookup via Firewire at all?

Here's another version. It mentions a restart...try that.

DALE

Malaya10 wrote:

Hi,

I have all (5 years worth) of my media (music, movies, pics) on the portable hard drive, and I want to avoid the need to wipe it clean and start over.

Do you have a backup of all that stored somewhere else?

I see you have another post going. Your helper there is posting what I was going to next on removing the drive inside..

I bought OWC's FW hard drive enclosure. You can put in your own drive(s) (I bought Seagate drives from OWC) depending on whether you want a single drive backup, dual or RAID. I bought the OWC Mercury Elite...great enclosure rated top in all my Mac magazines. What's nice about these is, if the drive goes bad you can replace it yourself and not have to get rid of the whole unit (like what happened to my Western Digital FW Ext. drive last time!). OWC's enclosures have Oxford chipsets which are totally Mac friendly. They also work for Windows machines. OWC also backs up their products...no arguing involved.

They also have their own power supply. DALE

Malaya,

On a MacPro you can install additional drives in the case with really not much trouble at all. I backup my main drive to a second drive in the Pro. Then the next week I backup to my external. That way I am never more then a week behind on backing up which works well for me.

The external drive I linked to will enable you to install the drive, that's in your bad external, if it is meant for an Intel Mac. Otherwise a different external enclosure will be needed. Also, if it's the right drive, you could install it right into the Pro.

Do doubt you will destroy your old unit trying to get the drive out. It's really not meant to be disassembled.

I have a bad ext. here that I have to do the same thing to. That's why an enclosure is the way to go.....so easy to take the drive in and out.

Good luck!