Does disk utility repair disk delete any files on the external hard drive?
MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1), 8 GB Ram, 2.9 GHz Intel Core i7
It has no effect except on the drive it is repairing. Repairing only affects the directory and filesystem. If a directory is corrupted and repaired then it's possible a file or two may be lost on the drive in question. But Disk Utility does not delete files except when you erase a drive.
Thank you for your quick response. So my issue is i have an external hard drive that shows up in disk utility but not in finder. I am curious if i run disk repair if it will erase anything on the hard drive because i have files that i need on there.
This is a Windows disk, yes? You cannot repair it on the Mac.
Try clicking on the Eject button in the Disk Utility toolbar. If the disk entry disappears from Disk Utility, then disconnect it from the computer. Wait a few seconds then re-connect it. What happens?
It doesn't eject the disk
What did it do? What happened besides it didn't eject the disk?
This time select the second entry, 500HDD WD. Click on the Mount icon in the toolbar. Does the drive show up on your Desktop? Then try clicking on the Eject icon in the toolbar. As before - what happens? Be as complete as possible.
The first picture is trying to mount the disk the second picture is trying to eject the disk. Those are the two errors that come up when trying to eject and trying to mount.
I don't believe this external is seen as connected, but hard to know what's going on with it since Disk Utility does detect it.
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. Paste the following at the Terminal's prompt:
diskutil list
Press RETURN. Copy the output and post it here. Do a regular text copy and paste. Don't take a snapshot.
diskutil list
Last login: Sun Dec 21 16:07:46 on console
Justins-MacBook-Pro:~ justinmontoya$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *750.2 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_CoreStorage 749.3 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD *748.9 GB disk1
Logical Volume on disk0s2
4A646B29-3794-4A34-AC98-C0FB505D402B
Unlocked Encrypted
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: FDisk_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk2
1: DOS_FAT_32 500HDD WD 500.1 GB disk2s1
Justins-MacBook-Pro:~ justinmontoya$
That external drive is partitioned MBR and formatted FAT32 or MSDOS.
Disk Utility cannot repair the drive, so don't try. I don't know why it is not mounting on your computer. All I can recommend trying is to shutdown the computer and remove power from the drive if it has an external power source. Unplug the drive from your computer. Restart the computer and boot up. If the external drive has a power source, then connect it to the external drive and wait a few seconds for it to spin up. Reconnect the drive to the computer and hope it mounts.
is there a reason you would need the drive formatted for a PC? Such as for data exchange? if not then you should prep the drive exclusively for the Mac and OS X. If there are files on the disk that you need, they could be recovered by connecting the drive to a PC. The drive could also be repaired on a PC should that be needed.
does disk utility repair delete any files on external hard drive?
