Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
I have a Hitachi 1TB external drive that suddenly is unmountable - disk utility says that it's fine, repair disk says it's fine, but it won't mount - any ideas? The files are extremely important (aren't they always???) and I really need to get it fixed! Would greatly appreciate your ideas/help!
To possibly help you we need to know:
What Mac this is and what version of OS X it is running,
How the Hitachi is formatted,
How it is connected.
my apologies - i'm running lion 10.7.5 on both a macbook pro and imac - the hitachi was "stripped" to only run on a mac, as it was having problems originally going back and forth between platforms - it is connected through usb and is powered with a cord of its own - it is plugged in directly to the outlet and there's no hub for the usb...
thanks again...
jeremy
the hitachi was "stripped" to only run on a mac
Not very clear: how has it been formatted?
i'm sorry - i'm not exactly sure how to technically say it was formatted - the drive wouldn't go back and forth between mac and pc, so i deleted all pc elements off of it and have had no issues with it working with just the macs that i use (macbook pro and an imac) hope this makes sense...
Zap the PRAM and Reset the SMC, then try again.
I have this problem too with my Western Digital 1TB My Passport for Mac.
Downloaded Card Data Recovery - did not work. The software self terminated itself when the problematic WD is connected. Starts up fine when the WD is not connected by USB.
Then I downloaded Remo Recovery. Starts up fine, scans fine and appears to save the files but ALL the files 'saved' are unreadable.
Finally, downloaded Stellar Phoenix in a last ditch attempt to recover my precious video files. Starts fine, saves fine BUT it cannot save files above 200MB because the WD stops working every 10 minutes.So, did not solve my problem totally because I have so many files above 200MB.
And yes, I PAID for all the software above. And the first two software are reluctant to refund me my money until their development team can ascertain whether it's a software bug, over online web conference. And because of the time differences, I can never get online with them. So, all my money gone.
Until one day I opened Activity Monitor and noticed this 'fsck_hfs' starting up everytime I connected the problematic WD My Passport for Mac.
So, tried to Force Quit 'fsck_hfs' and VOILA!
A dialogue box popped up and says that the Passport for Mac cannot be repaired and that I can move and copy files from it but not save to it.
PHEW!!
At least I can access the files and save them to my Seagate 1TB although now I am having a problem opening FCP X project files rescued from the WD.
ðŸ˜
If you were in front of me right now I would have kissed you! it totally solved my problem 😀
Thanks. A LOT!
Had similar problem with ExFat drive that would not mount. Saw fsck_exfat process in activity monitor, killed it and now can copy data off the drive again, the dialogue also warned to back up this hard drive immediately. Thanks Bernatto for asking the question and mdazlan76 for answering it!
unmountable external hard drive
