Formatting Toshiba external hard drive FAILS

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Formatting Toshiba external hard drive FAILS

Dear all,

since today my TOSHIBA external hard drive cannot be accessed anymore. It is recognised on Windows and Mac but it shows following message after being plugged in: "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer.". After pressing the button "Initialise" I tried "First Aid" which failed and "Erase" as well. Also here the operation fails due to the inability of writing to the last block of the device.

FYI: My device is password protected (TOSHIBA software) and worked before on both Mac and Windows. Recently I updated my macbook to OS X El Capitan.

I would like to repair my hard drive but I would be also fine with formatting it. Number one prio is to bring it back to work again.

I am thankful for every idea/response which leads to a possible solution.

Cheers!

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3), null

Posted on Feb 14, 2016 3:18 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 14, 2016 4:17 AM in response to CW888

Hi Cw888:

If your external drive worked on both Windows and Mac it may have been formatted as FAT32 or exFAT. Both are compatible with both Mac and PC, but they both have some limitations. Also sometime Mac or PC can have troubles with them.

So another option is NTFS which Windows uses. Mac cannot read NTFS format, but there are a few programs with will allow you to use NTFS on Mac.

Two such programs are Paragon NTFS for Mac and Tuxera NTFS for Mac.

If as you say your external hard drive worked on both Mac and Windows, it may have been using one of these 2 programs. When you updated to El Capitan you may have needed to reinstall one of these programs to make your external drive compatible.

So you have tried to reformat your hard drive. You said you clicked on erase which would have erased any data which was on your drive. It sounds like it proceeded to erase but failed at some point, so if you had any data on the drive it is most likely gone.

Have you tried the drive on Windows to see if it works there?

There are a many good videos about how to format you external drive on Youtube. Here is one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq0_PQa8Irs

Here is another link. http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/04/format-an-external-hard-drive-or-usb-flash-drive- for-mac-os-x/

Take a look at the videos and see if they help.

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Answer 2

CW888 Author

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Feb 14, 2016 8:20 AM in response to KimUserName

Hi Kim,

Thank you for your quick reply.

I can confirm that the video instruction is showing similar steps that I have done before while trying to erase the hard drive. After telling the software to start the formatting process again it immediately stops due to another failure message which I have attached to this post.

As additional information I do not even see the typical icon on the desktop that a hard drive is connected to my macbook. On Windows I do not see a connection at all even the sound for a connected device pops up.

Is there any other way to get access to my hard drive again? What could be the root cause for this malfunctioning?

Cheers!

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Answer 3

Feb 14, 2016 9:36 AM in response to CW888

It is beginning to sound like either a hard drive failure or a failure of the drive interface.

See the following post for some useful information.Your dead external hard drive is likely fine! Great hope for your 'faulty' external HD

Kim

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Answer 4

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,660 points

Feb 14, 2016 9:44 AM in response to CW888

CW888 wrote:

FYI: My device is password protected (TOSHIBA software) and worked before on both Mac and Windows. Recently I updated my macbook to OS X El Capitan.

Are you certain that the Toshiba software still works on 10.11?

It seems to me that Toshiba's software is not doing it's job, so visit their site & check you have the latest version for 10.11 installed, older software is not always compatible, check at http://roaringapps.com

I'd also consider removing the Toshiba software if you don't need it - it could be involved in your current issue. Try reformatting in Recovery mode to take the Toshiba software out of the equation. OS X: About OS X Recovery - Apple Support Chose Disk Utility from the list that appears.

NOTE: If you attempt to repair a drive encrypted by another tool (such as this Toshiba software) it may break your data depends on how they store it. Third party encryption is generally a bad idea - OS X has Filevault which can encrypt the data & generally works across OS updates. I understand it isn't cross platform, so that makes matters more difficult.

Are you trying to remove all the data on this disk & start afresh or are you hoping to access the files that were on it?

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