Moving older internal drive to an external enclosure, NO work!

Question

Moving older internal drive to an external enclosure, NO work!

I recently retired my 2008 Mac Pro for a new (late) 2013 iMac (500GB SSD). I took a 1TB internal SATA drive from the Mac Pro and put it into a USB external enclosure to use with my new iMac (as a backup drive).

When I connect the drive, it cannot be seen by the new computer. It states that the drive is incompatible and do I want to initialize the drive.

I had an SSD drive from the Mac Pro that did the same thing when I put it into a similar enclosure and I went ahead and initialized it because it was the startup drive on the Mac Pro which I migrated to the new iMac so all the files are on my new computer's SSD Drive. I am now going to use this older SSD drive as a backup drive. I will eventually get a Thunderbolt enclosure for this drive.

When I use disk utility to see what's up with the 1TB SATA drive, it shows up but is unreconizable. It does not alow me to verify, repair or mount the disk.

I am thinking that I need to put the drive back into the old Mac Pro and back it up to another drive. The issue I have is that the Mac Pro is 150 miles away and I would like to avoid the trip.

BTW, I have tried some data recovery programs and they do not work. (ie: Tech Tool Pro 7, StellarPhoenixMacDataRecovery).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Posted on Dec 5, 2013 4:46 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 5, 2013 5:09 PM in response to Scott Hoffner

To be dealt with in a reasonable way, a drive must reveal BOTH its Make&Model and a reasonable non-Zero Size/Capacity to Disk Utility and Apple System Profiler.

A drive that will not do that is not usable in its current state. If its cabling, power, and the enclosure's Bridge chip is all "Known good", the drive has died.

PlotinusVeritas loves to add here, "The Bridge chips in most enclosures are cr@p, that's what usually goes."

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Answer 2

The hatter

Level 9

60,980 points

Dec 6, 2013 4:09 AM in response to Scott Hoffner

Get a better powered USB3 drive case w/ power adapter, it seems to be common factor.

TTPro should but seems iffy at times too. Start with Data Rescue 3 demo. Then go on to Disk Warrior and Carbon Copy Cloner. And some good reliable drive(s) to restore to that are blank and have been zeroed out.

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Answer 3

Dec 8, 2013 7:16 AM in response to Scott Hoffner

I finally gave up and drove down to where my old Mac Pro was, inserted the drive and it showed up on the desktop. I then copied the contents to a new external USB3 drive and took it back to the new iMac. Everything was okay.

I now have the data backed up three times on three different devises.

I speculate The Hatter was right when he suggested the drive case was not good enough.

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