WD external portable hard drive issues

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WD external portable hard drive issues

Please help me getting very frustrated!

I have a WD portable external hard drive, it has been working fine in my IMAC, connected today and it is shown on desktop and recognized in disk utility, i click on the icon to open it my desktop flashes and freezes for couple of seconds and goes back to normal and the hard drive doesnt open, the drive light is flashing and is running just cannot access it to save my life.

Disk utility says the drive is fine, have alot of data and pics on this drive and need to get them back.

Please help me

Thanks john

iMac (24-inch Early 2008), iOS 6.1.4

Posted on Sep 8, 2013 1:46 PM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Sep 8, 2013 2:13 PM in response to Johndrake12

Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, Test for problem in Safe Mode...

Reboot, test again.

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Answer 2

Johndrake12 Author

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Sep 8, 2013 2:17 PM in response to BDAqua

Hi DBAqua il try it out i take it this wont delete any of the data?

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Answer 3

Johndrake12 Author

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Sep 8, 2013 2:30 PM in response to BDAqua

Ok, i am unable to click repair disk permissions because when i set the permissions i click 'get info' and it does the same thing flashes and goes back to normal, i clicked 'repair disk it says

'The volume johns drive appears to be ok'

Volume repair complete.

Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required

Any ideas ??????

The HD. Still flashes when attempting to open!

Grrrrr lol !

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Answer 4

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Sep 8, 2013 3:28 PM in response to Johndrake12

Oh, the Repair Permissions was for the nternal drive, you can only Repair Permissions on a drive wuth OSX on it.

In Disk Utility, if you highlight the external drive is the Mount icon lit?

So it shows in Finder, just can't open it?

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Answer 5

Johndrake12 Author

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Sep 8, 2013 3:30 PM in response to BDAqua

Hi again,

Yes it is mounted and it shows in finder window, but when i click on it it just flashes and finder closes

Very strange never seen this before.

Thanks again

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Answer 6

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Sep 8, 2013 3:42 PM in response to Johndrake12

Couple of more things to try...

In Finder's Menu, select Go menu>Go to Folder, and go to "/volumes". (no quotes)

Volumes is where an alias to your hard drive ("/" at boot) is placed at startup, and where all the "mount points" for auxiliary drives are created for you to access them. This folder is normally hidden from view.

Drives with an extra 1 on the end have a side-effect of mounting a drive with the same name as the system already think exists. Try trashing the duplicates with a 1 or 2 if there are no real files in them, and reboot.

If it does contain data...

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2474

Safe Boot , (holding Shift key down at bootup), use Disk Utility from there to Repair Permissions, test if things work OK in Safe Mode.

Then move these files to the Desktop for now...

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.recentitems.plist

Reboot & test.

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