Q: Mavericks corrupts external hard drive

That command just makes a directory called…

/Volumes/Name

The mount command will mount a disk, however if it is damaged it won't work.

StephanJeremy you need to give a lot more detail, it sounds like you might have a different issue that won't help users with a corrupt HD.

Okay. Sorry. Was in class.

$ diskutil help - will list help for the command

$ diskutil mount - will list help about mount (because of missing args)

$ diskutil list - will list connected drives (whether mounted or not)

from that list select the identifier to mount eg…

$ diskutil mount disk0s1

$ diskutil mountDisk MyDriveName

If disk utility the Application won't mount because of damage the terminal version may not either.

Remember to remove it without ejecting it to force disk repair after.

Hopefully this work.

PS

Let me know if it work. Worked fine for me. If not, will keeping trying to find a solution. Loosing data is ****

How can "Verify Disk" repair a disk?

I thought "Verify Disk" is just a read/check and report process.

Hi coxorange!

I have no idea what the answer to this question is but that is all I did and that is what worked. If it hadn't of worked the next thing I was going to try was the Repair function but fortunately I didn't need to.

Tony

Disk Utility's verify looks for damage & doesn't change anything on disk. The repair feature will resolve issues, verify touches nothing, as such it is not a fix.

Either you got lucky & it fixed itself somehow, or the issue may reappear. My guess is that the unmount process may have caused something to be closed cleanly before the disk was verified.

Tony808 

How can "Verify Disk" repair a disk?

There is EXTREMELY LITTLE both verify and REPAIR disk can do to a HD,...in case of any ongoing mechanical failure or armature bar/head problems etc.,

.......its like trying to e-mail a Band-Aid to someone with a cut across the globe,.......useless.

I've had the same thing happen. Occasionally during my testing, simply using Disk Utility to verify a partition has made that partition mountable.

I suspect that what is actually happening is that the act of simply accessing the metadata, in order to verify it, changes something in the metadata (e.g. directory structure, flags, etc.) that makes the partition mountable. But I have no clue as to what that would be.

-- GetRealBro

.......its like trying to e-mail a Band-Aid to someone with a cut across the globe,.......useless.

Did it ever occur to that emailing someone a band-Aid could cheer someone up thus aiding the person's recovery or at least making them happier for the day! You may even have hit onto a great idea! You need to be more positive dude and less robot-like.

Your remark "useless" is a direct insult to me whether you see it that way or not. Your "level 5" rating means nothing if you cannot also accept the occasional simply solution in some instances.

Tony

Im just short of willing to "bet the farm" a key source of this is with a yet unknown file structure trigger working in conjunction with SPOTLIGHT in Mavericks.

Mavericks major overhaul nexus was SPOTLIGHT

Any who have known corruption on a drive for experimentation, should test disconnect from spotlight for sake of testing (if they are inclined):

Ways to Prevent Spotlight from Indexing Items on Your Mac

a permissions issue >  Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes

1. From the Apple () menu, choose System Preferences.
2. Click Spotlight.
3. Click the Privacy tab.
4. Drag a folder or an entire volume (your hard drive) to the list.
5. If prompted for confirmation, click OK.
6. Remove the item or volume you just added to the list by clicking it and then clicking the minus ("-") button.
7. Close Spotlight preferences.

In the premise of data corruption, Im not claiming Spotlight is beginning and end of this issue,... but extremely likely the "fire"..........with a yet unknown variety of external "combustible" structures acting the part of the gasoline

Id also enable the privacy tab for the external HD in Mavericks to stop spotlight indexing in the case of a corrupted drive for testing.

This is very akin seemingly as to the reason Mavericks Spotlight is corrupting Mailboxes and causing them to be empty.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5469097?start=0&tstart=0

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

 

Im just short of willing to "bet the farm" a key source of this is with a yet unknown file structure trigger working in conjunction with SPOTLIGHT in Mavericks. ...

This may help.

It has been my practice since the arrival of Spotlight to avoid using it as much as possible, particularly on external drives. In the early days I’d use the Terminal to manually add all of the names of my external drives to Spotlight's exclusion list and delete the hidden Spotlight index files to free up disk space. Frankly I’d turn Spotlight off completely if I could. But that’s another rant…

So these days I just try my best to drag the icon of external drives/partitions into Spotlight’s Privacy tab ASAP. During the cleanup of the 6 Seagate drives, I kept Spotlight’s Privacy tab open all the time to speed up this process. But occasionally Spotlight would still begin indexing a partition before I could “turn off Spotlight” for that partition. And at least twice Spotlight would not allow me to drag a partition icon into the Privacy tab saying that I didn’t have the necessary permissions. In those cases I shutdown my MBP to stop Spot light from indexing the volume, because I knew the partition had a very large TM backup folder structure and it would take forever. When I started up again I’d drag the partition icon more quickly.

I’d like to tell you that these were the two partitions that later would not mount. But I really can’t remember.

— GetRealBro

I have 2 segate drives that Maverick has corrupted! funnily enought only my cheap little WD drive I use for file transfer is the only one that isn't fubarred! Saying that I don't buy WD over Toshiba as option 1 or Segate as option 2.

Well, this thread isnt about HD build quality, mechanics-wise etc.,.... as to which will live longer, etc. 

Rather a software issue due to one of several already-mentioned things above.

The only Hard drive make someone could depend on all the time every time, rain or shine,....is a pile of hard drives connected and unconnected,   made by Redundancy Inc..   as recommended by all storage pros.

(that was geek humor of course),... however with serious intent.

(*However on that note, recently released Helium-Filled Hard Drives show great promise on reducing wear, and improving hard drive life, using less power,....and will reduce friction and heat, which are all data killers in the case of hard drives)

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/521011/fast-and-spacious-helium-filled-hard -drives-ready-for-liftoff/

PV - so let me understand better what might be a solution.

I have a WD MyBook II 4TB (2 x 2TB) drive which was repartitioned into the MyBook and EFI (for a short time, then it disappeared) and showed no files, empty.

I recovered literally all of my data with Data Rescue 3 but the files are all disorganized.    Some of the .jpgs still have metadata, and the .mov files seem to have some metadata attached (when I try to run some, they refer to old files that are missing with long iTunes .mov names from the original camcorder).    No data appears to be damaged or lost.    The mp3s were all fine with metadata attached but of course, not in original folder structure.

If I do this Spotlight re-index, will it have some effect (i.e. I will see my folders, data structure, etc. again)?

The drive mounts fine and disconnects fine (albeit very slow, as was always with Mavericks).  

Thanks

No, once the 'cat is out of the bag' as per data corruption specifically complex metadata (Vid files etc.),.... no indications are present that any method has achieved total or even most metadata that had been lost

however reports of quality of success on this vary widely, I've seen no proof of a post partitioning corruption home run as per data retrieval or even close to it.     yet

Spotlight is a search index. People keep describing file structure as 'metadata', but it isn't managed by Spotlight.

The metadata Spotlight uses is generally pulled out of the file data (like video dimensions, exif data on photos, id3 tags on audio).

The folder structure is a feature of the disk catalog, Spotlight doesn't manage file & folder structure so it won't recreate your old iTunes library structure for example when it reindexes some mp3s.

The original Spotlight data will have been stored in a hidden folder on the disk.

You may be better trying another recovery tool, ones that recover the disk catalog may allow you to get file structure with Spotlight metadata. If the catalog is repaired you may also get the Spotlight index too, since it's a collection of files & folders (just hidden).

It sounds like your recovery didn't use or try to repair the catalog & simply 'file carved' based on the file headers. This will recover file data but the structure is lost (and so is the naming, since that was within the catalog).

Important things like disk catalogs & partition sizes are usually backed up in other locations on disk, so some recovery tools will seek the backups.

I believe Disk Drill was mentioned as working well in this situation.

https://discussions.apple.com/message/23876742#23876742

Link above was meant to point to Alex.Chernenko's post.