WD External drive won't mount

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Level 1

60 points

WD External drive won't mount

Hello everyone! I haven't been here in a while because I just haven't had any Mac issues. Now I do.

I have a 1 TB WD external HD that won't mount. I connect it via firewire to an Old G4 Sawtooth running OS 10.5.8. My mac sees the drive, it just won't mount. I've also tried to mount it via USB, but again, my system sees the drive, but won't mount it. I inadvertantly disconnected the firewire cable, which I didn't realize for several hours. I reattached the cable, tried to mount it, and nothing. I ran disc repairs, and Disc Utility actually told me the drive was successfully repaired. Again I tried to remount it, but nothing. I repaired permissions, and this didn't work. I've tried different cables, and this doesn't work.

I don't have another Mac to connect it to, so I don't know if this would work. Here's where things get a little wierd, but interesting. I connected it to my PC laptop, and it mounted. Now, this is a drive that was formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) on my G4, so I have to use Mac Drive so my PC will recognize and mount The Drive. So My PC sees The Drive as Mac OS Extended, and mounts it. All files are in tact, and the drive runs normally. This is a music drive and it plays normally on my PC. Meanwhile, if I try connecting it back on My Mac, the name of The Drive randomly changes from 931.5 GB WD to 931.5 GB WD My Media Book. I believe My Media Book is the factory name of The Drive before OS formatting. The Volume name remains the same on my G4 each time I've tried to mount it.

I do have another identical drive that mounts from all the bus ports on my G4. Any ideas here? Can I get my Drive to begin mounting on my G4 again? Any and all answers are appreciated.

Sawtooth G4; 1.8 GHz Dual 7447A; Radeon 9800/128MB; 2GB Ram, Mac OS X (10.4.11), Seagate 200 & 500GB HD; WD 120GB HD; Lacie DVD±RW; 550 Watt PSU

Posted on Feb 22, 2013 12:19 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 4, 2015 6:32 PM in response to mdazlan76

This helped me (force qui FSCK command). Wow I was worried. Next time I'll let it run but in the mean time I'm back in business.

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Answer 2

Oct 16, 2015 7:11 AM in response to medinaray

Two years on and this post still contains the single greatest solution to mounting stubborn drives. Force quitting fsck.hfs in Activity Monitor is a life saver. Thanks everyone!

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Answer 3

Oct 19, 2015 11:40 AM in response to BDAqua

AHHHH This is the only thing that has worked for me! Thank you so much!

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Answer 4

BDAqua

Level 10

240,833 points

Oct 19, 2015 4:46 PM in response to snmclaughlin

Great to hear! 🙂

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Answer 5

laila.sb

Level 1

0 points

Oct 26, 2015 11:44 AM in response to BDAqua

Hi, Sorry i realize this is an old post but i am having the same issue and i found the hard drive using your instructions from Go to finder and it has shown up but it won't let me access it it says "you don't have permission to see its contents" what do i do now?

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Answer 6

BDAqua

Level 10

240,833 points

Oct 26, 2015 12:11 PM in response to laila.sb

Could it be in use by some App or Service?

In Finder can you do a Get Info on it & see what it says for privileges?

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Answer 7

Nov 29, 2015 6:44 AM in response to medinaray

Hi, I have the same problem wih a seagate 3tera, after I tried to open in windows with HSF paragon the osx extende journaled wont mount it even in mac, just apears in the disk utility like in the image. How can I resolve this to mount the disk and back up the files?

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Answer 8

BDAqua

Level 10

240,833 points

Nov 29, 2015 11:56 AM in response to joaofranz

Have you tried maybe repairing the drive on a PC?

Have you tried mounting it in Terminal?

diskutil mount /dev/disk3s2

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Answer 9

Nov 29, 2015 12:06 PM in response to BDAqua

Hi BDAqua, thansk for the answear. I have already tried mounting the drive from de disk utility, the options is disabled I think is because It is being recognized by the osx as a microsoft hd. In windows the drive isnt recognized either, only in disk manager so I dont know how to repair it.

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Answer 10

BDAqua

Level 10

240,833 points

Nov 29, 2015 12:15 PM in response to joaofranz

I believe that Microsoft Reserved disk3s1 is the hidden Directory sectors, not the unshown main volume after that.

Does the whole drive show up in DU above that MS partition?

Can You highlight that & try Repair?

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Answer 11

Nov 29, 2015 12:37 PM in response to BDAqua

Yes, I think you are right, it only shows up the 134,2 mb of the hidden directory not the main volume. I'm not sure if I understood your question but I'm pretty sure that only the microsof reserved is shown. When I click in info in the DU what shows up is this:

When I go to the FIrst Aid option I got this (problems with the partition map that prevent booting):

And what I forgot to mention is that when I connect the HD I get this message:

The HSF software that I used in windows to try to open files from this HD might have corrupted him in some way that now isn't readable by my mac.

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Answer 12

BDAqua

Level 10

240,833 points

Nov 29, 2015 1:34 PM in response to joaofranz

The Filesystem.... unknown I'd think indicates the NTFS SW is damaged or not running, but not sure since Windows doesn't see it either, so, likely you're correcxt & it's damaged in some way unknown.

Never tried these...

http://www.easeus.com/data-recovery/partition-recovery-software/free-ntfs-volume -recovery.htm

http://www.ntfs.com/recovery-toolkit.htm

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/283116-32-recover-ntfs-partition-drive

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/245725

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Answer 13

Nov 30, 2015 9:55 AM in response to BDAqua

Hi BDAqua, I will try all of the links but I notice they are all for the NTSF format, I was thinking if is not better to recover the drive for the osx journaled since it was this kind of formating the drive was. Excuse me if I'm saying something wrong, I'm not an expert in this. I was thinking I could try to mount it in the terminal with command lines but I was not able, I dont know how to discover the exact name of the drive.

I Tried Stellar Phoenix data recovery and in this software I'm able to do a Raw Recovery but since the HD is 3TB It will take more than a week for reading all the data.

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Answer 14

BDAqua

Level 10

240,833 points

Nov 30, 2015 10:41 AM in response to joaofranz

Good question, it looks like Paragon tried to make it an NTFS Disk, can't tell, but if Stellar Phoenix can do it, I'd try that even though it'd take a long time.

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Answer 15

hibou_-

Level 1

7 points

Dec 1, 2015 5:36 AM in response to medinaray

I'm having the same problem, maybe someone can help?

I'm on the new MacBook, and using a WD 1 TB external HD, with USB adapter sold by apple. The first time I plugged it in for a backup everything went well until my macbook ran out of battery. As there's only one port, I had to unplug the HD in order to plug in the power cord. Of course I got the message that the drive had not been properly ejected. When the macbook was charged I plugged the HD back in, but now it won't show up, not even in /Volumes/ or Disk Utilities.

I plugged the disk in to a MacBook Air and it showed up in Disk Utilities but did not mount. I did a disk repair and then it mounted it via terminal on the Air. It now mounts on the Air with no problem as soon as plugged in, but when I plug it in to the MacBook it still doesn't show up anywhere.

Any help would be appreciated!

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