External Hard Drive not recognized.

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innerspace3 Author

Level 1

25 points

External Hard Drive not recognized.

Hello everyone,

I have a probem where my external hard drive is not being recognized by my late 2009 iMac.

The hard drive is an OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro connected to the firewire port.

It was working fine till this happenend:

I keep all of my iTuned music on the external hard drive.

I was using a meta tag fixer type program.

I dragged the files from itunes into this program (Tune Up) to fix the meta tags.

However, I missed the program and dragged thusands of .mp3 files onto my desktop.

My computer, of course, became unresponsive.

So I used the power button on the back of the iMac to shut it off.

I used my MacBookPro to connect to my iMac as a target drive, and deleted all the .mp3's from the desktop there.

Once I restarted my iMac everything was fine, except that the external hard drive has not been able to be recognised ever since.

The same drive shows up just fine on my MacBookPro.

Help!

Thanks!

Posted on Sep 18, 2013 12:11 AM

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Answer 1

innerspace3 Author

Level 1

25 points

Sep 18, 2013 12:13 AM in response to innerspace3

Oh, yes, the drive is recognized when I connect via USB.

But this is my Audio Drive for my music production recording, and I need the bandwidth of Firewire.

Thanks again!

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Answer 2

Dec 15, 2013 12:28 PM in response to innerspace3

I had the exact same problem! I had to force shut down my iMac (24in, Mid 2007) due to a system freeze. After restarting, everything was working fine, except for my external 1GB G-Drive, which was connected through FW800 port.

The drive connected fine to my MacBook Pro, but it would not be recognized by my iMac. I tried restarting, but neither Disk Utility, nor System profiler would see the drive.

What worked though, was Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC):

1. Shut down the computer.

2. Unplug the computer's power cord.

3. Wait fifteen seconds.

4. Attach the computer's power cord.

5. Wait five seconds, then press the power button to turn on the computer.

The drive mounts fine now. I am surprised this is not mentioned by Apple in their support documents! It has happened twice to me and it was the only thing worked both times. The link for the resetting the SMC is here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Hope this helps solve your problem too.

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Answer 3

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Dec 15, 2013 2:00 PM in response to christosvas

If resetting the SMC doesn't do the trick, Reset the NVRAM/PRAM.

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