twyndyllyngs
Level 1 (4 points)
Mac OS X

Q: Problem with repairing non-responsive external hard drive on Disk Utility

I have a late-2011 15" MacBook Pro currently running Yosemite, and a 2TB Western Digital external hard drive. I plugged the latter in and found it was taking an incredibly long time to show me its contents, and copied data over at an extremely slow rate. It also wouldn't eject properly, so I ended up having to unplug without ejecting. It is now not recognised at all by Finder, and when I open Disk Utility it is greyed out. I've tried repeatedly to repair to no avail. This is the dialogue that comes up when I click Repair Disk:

 

Verify and Repair volume "[Drive name]"

Repairing file system.

Invalid content in journal

Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.

Checking extents overflow file.

The volume [Drive name] could not be verified completely.

Invalid content in journal

File system check exit code is 8.

Updaitng boot support partitions for the volume as required.

Error: Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back up as many files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.

 

Any suggestions for what else to try? There's a lot of unbelievably important data on this drive and while I'm thinking I might have to go through a data recovery specialist, I wanted to make sure I'd tried everything in my power first.

MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2011), OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on Sep 6, 2016 10:27 AM

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twyndyllyngs

Q: Problem with repairing non-responsive external hard drive on Disk Utility

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  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Sep 6, 2016 10:41 AM in response to twyndyllyngs
    Level 5 (7,446 points)
    Notebooks
    Sep 6, 2016 10:41 AM in response to twyndyllyngs

    If the data is 'incredibly important' you should stop messing with it & take it to a data recovery specialist. If the disk is physically failing you may be making the data unrecoverable by trying to fix it yourself. Even trying to copy data off the disk can potentially cause more damage. Power it off & think about your next steps.

     

    Do you have any backups of it at all?

     

    There are many third party recovery & repair tools you can try but they may not help & you also need another disk to recover onto. I suggest your priority is thinking about how much you can afford to pay to get the data back - data recovery by specialists is not cheap, but it should be the best option.