katier823
Level 1 (4 points)
Notebooks

Q: My external hard drive won't mount and I'm not sure what the issue is

My external hard drive will show up in disk utility but not finder. I've tried hitting "repair disk" and it says it'll take 4 hours, but after a long time it'll finally say it's impossible to repair the disk and I need to do a backup.

Help??

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)

Posted on Jul 24, 2016 8:50 AM

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katier823

Q: My external hard drive won't mount and I'm not sure what the issue is

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  • Helpful answers

  • by Esquared,

    Esquared Esquared Jul 24, 2016 1:18 PM in response to katier823
    Level 6 (8,518 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 24, 2016 1:18 PM in response to katier823

    Almost always the issue is quite simple: the hard drive is failing or has failed. So I do hope you have a backup of everything that's on there – that is quite essential.

  • by katier823,

    katier823 katier823 Jul 24, 2016 1:35 PM in response to Esquared
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Notebooks
    Jul 24, 2016 1:35 PM in response to Esquared

    Is there somewhere I can take it to that they could retrieve the documents on the hard drive? Most of them are on my computer but not all - I was dumb and didn't think it was likely that this would be happening. 

  • by Esquared,

    Esquared Esquared Jul 24, 2016 1:38 PM in response to katier823
    Level 6 (8,518 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 24, 2016 1:38 PM in response to katier823

    All hard disks can and will fail at some point. So that's a lesson learned.

     

    Data Recovery services do exist, but are quite expensive. A bit less expensive is Data Recovery software, but I have no experience with that. Hopefully more knowing contributors of this forum can offer their expertise.

  • by macjack,

    macjack macjack Jul 24, 2016 1:50 PM in response to katier823
    Level 9 (55,709 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 24, 2016 1:50 PM in response to katier823

    As Esquared says, data recovery services are very pricey. If there is any chance of recovery at all your best bet is Prosoft Data Recovery.

    https://www.prosofteng.com/datarescue-mac-data-recovery/

    There is a free trial to see if it can recover what you need. But don't do another process on that drive until you've downloaded and run it.


    Always keep your Mac backed up on an external disk with either Time Machine and/or a cloning utility like SuperDuper or CarbonCopy Cloner. One Time Machine and one up-to-date clone is a good combination. Then you can use TimeMachine to backup or restore your Mac. And use your clone as a platform you can boot from and continue to work normally if anything happens to your system or internal drive.