I have a 2TB Seagate GoFlex Desk external HD. I have used this HD for my TImeMachine backups and now it will not mount on my iMac. I have posted about this before and was told it was probably a bad catalog and could be fixed with DiskWarrior. How do I fix it with DiskWarrior?
iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9)
If the disk won't mount it may be too far gone to fix. Does it show up as umounted in Disk Utility? If it does then let Disk Utility try to fix it first. If Disk Utility doesn't see the drive then you may be out of luck. DiskWarrior is a commercial product that many people, including myslef, swear by.
Yes it shows up as unmounted in Disk Utility. I ran a "Verify" and "Repair" in DU. Below are the messages I got.
It suggests backing up my files on the drive, how do I access them if the disk is unmounted?
auburnfan21 wrote:
It suggests backing up my files on the drive, how do I access them if the disk is unmounted?
Well that's the rub. If you can't mount the disk you can't backup the files. Since the drive does show up in Disk Utility then DiskWarrior may indeed be able to repair it. The simplest solution is do what Disk Utility advises. Erase and reformat the drive. Your Time Machine backups will be lost so it depends on how important it is to save those files. If they are are important to you then definitely give DiskWarrior a shot at it. Since they are backups you may decide to say aw heck and reformat.
Thanks a bunch for the info and help! I ran a "Rebuild" using DiskWarrior and got this message...
Why do I get this message? I am running DW from my iMac and not a DVD is this why? Also if all I had on the HD was Time Machine backups I would reformat, but I have pictures and other files I don't have backed up anywhere else and don't want to lose. Do you think I could reformat and recover my files using Data Rescue 3, or when it reformats does it erase the free space?
I don't think reformatting erases free space unless you tell it to. That message is strange. If I were you I'd give Alsoft tech support a call before doing anything drastic. They may have a suggestion or two. If Alsoft says all is lost then try what you stated. Good luck.
I have used DiskWarrior for many years and that is a very strange and rare error. I've never seen DiskWarrior run out of memory, and if your Mac has more than 4GB of RAM I don't think you should even get that message at all.
I would strongly recommend contacting Alsoft (makers of DiskWarrior) and mentioning that error code like it says.
Re-run DiskWarrior on the external HD again, but this time, depress the option key when choosing Rebuild and it will put DW into Scavenge mode, a lower level version of rebuild.
How to fix external HD with DiskWarrior?
