Seagate external hard drive won't mount

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Level 1

4 points

Seagate external hard drive won't mount

I'm having trouble getting a 2 TB Seagate Backup Plus drive to mount on my 2011 Macbook Pro. When I plug it into the USB port, Disk Utility detects it. I ran Verify Disk and it said the disk needed repair. So I ran Repair Disk and it said it was successful. However, the drive still won't mount. The drive will mount on other Macs, but not my Macbook Pro. It's not the problem of the USB port either because I could mount other external hard drives using it. The drive previously worked on my Mac until I updated my OS from Snow Leopard to Yosemite.

Could something be wrong with my Mac that is preventing the drive from mounting, or is it more likely to be a problem with the drive?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Feb 10, 2016 11:49 PM

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Answer 1

To_Mi

Level 4

1,202 points

Feb 11, 2016 12:58 AM in response to paradox11

I guess it is related to the Seagate's driver software for supporting NTFS on mac.

OS X supports NTFS natively but for read-only.

The provided driver installation allows read-write access, but it is seamingly outdated.

I just got the latest one from Seagate site, but it is still not new enough. The Info says supporting up to Mavericks only.

If it is the case, you can take one of below.

Uninstall the current driver, and wait Seagate to release new one. Until then, you can only have read access on the drive.
Uninstall the current driver, and get the newer version of driver from the developer, instead of from Seagate. The latest one from the developer ( Paragon ) even on El Capitan and not limited to Seagate drive. ( Paragon's is not Free but have Trial period - http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/ )
Uninstall the current driver, then take alternative solution. This threads will be your help for it. - Need to write to external drive(ntfs) in Yosemite

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Answer 2

paradox11 Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 11, 2016 1:06 AM in response to To_Mi

How do I tell if my external drive uses NTFS? I was able to read and write to the drive on my Macbook Pro before I updated to Yosemite. Also, I couldn't even read from the drive when I plugged it in.

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Answer 3

To_Mi

Level 4

1,202 points

Feb 12, 2016 3:26 PM in response to paradox11

> How do I tell if my external drive uses NTFS?

1. Open Terminal app ( in Applications > Utilities )

2. Type in diskutil list and Enter.

3. You will see lines of output something like below. ( This is for my Mac Mini with Internal drive only )

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 999.3 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

You will get second set of similar following them for (most likely) /dev/disk1, if your mac has an external drive connected.

In the case above, there are three partition. - EFI (for mac boot), Macintosh HD (OS X), and Recovery HD ( for booting in recovery mode ).

The TYPE column tells what is the format of the partition.

"Apple_HFS" is for normal boot/data partition for OS X.
"Microsoft Basic Data" is NTFS, for Windows data or boot , including BootCamp.

Other possible TYPE can be listed with another Terminal command diskutil listFilesystems.

> I couldn't even read from the drive when I plugged it in.

I can only guess, as I have no detail info about what happened on your Mac at this point.

Probably, the Seagate driver took over OS for NTFS handling, but it fails to process due to necessary software ( part of driver ) did not work properly due to the compatibility with Yosemite.

It may help to identify the problem if you can find error messages in system log, which can be viewed with Console app ( also in Utilities folder ).

The message may come out either at OS boot or on connecting the drive.

Also, visit Seagate site and check if any firmware update is available for your drive ( req. serial number ).

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