Need help with my external hard drive (Mac)

[bif]

My computer won't recognize it. It's been working great for a couple years., Now the icon doesn't appear on my screen. Any suggestions?

[GirlinContempt]

1. Get a mac

oh.... wait....

[Omphaloskepsis]

2. Try this..

Unplug the external drive...
Open Terminal.app It can be found in /Applications/Utilities/

type in:
ls -alo /Volumes and hit return
diskutil list and hit return


Plug in the external drive and do the same...


Copy and paste the output of both here and I will take a look.. You should get something like this:




edit: added image to fix formatting... And have you tried a different cable?

[bif]

3. I PM'd the code to you

And yes I tried a different cable. I also went into Disk Utilities and It recognized the Hard drive. But one of the images had the type greyed out. I tried running Disck Repair and got an error message.

[Omphaloskepsis]

4. Sometimes Disk Utility gets weird when ran from the hard drive that is in use...

If you have the OS X install disks handy I would boot using them and try Disk Utility from there. While normally worthless, have you tried Repairing Permissions yet..? And did you just install the 10.4.9 upgrade?

[bif]

5. Unfortunately I don't have the install disks

The tech guy wherer I used to work did the upgrade for me. I'm still running 10.3.9. I did run the repair permission on my hard drive.

[Omphaloskepsis]

6. It is seeing the external drive from the Terminal output...

I'm not sure why it wouldn't mount... I'm still looking for an answer.. USB or Firewire? I'm looking for a way to force it into mounting.

[bif]

7. Firewire

[bif]

8. My frind recommended buying Disk Warrior

And running that.

[Omphaloskepsis]

9. I would agree with that..

If you have the time and money to do so.

You might want do try a Macintosh specific forum first and see if they can help. It might save you a couple of bucks.

I would suggest.
http://macnn.com/
http://www.macosxhints.com/
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/frm/f/8300945231


I looked for a long time to see how to run fsck on a firewire drive in single user mode.. No luck with that.. I think it would help, I just don't know the command to do it. It is 8:15AM here.. I need sleep, good luck..

[bif]

10. Thanks for your help!

If you figure it out, please PM me. I did hear Disk Warrior was something like $100 and I'm currently "underemployed", so if I can do it on the cheap...

[Omphaloskepsis]

11. I think I might know of a way to help for free...

I went out for a smoke and remembered something. Check back in a few minutes.

[Omphaloskepsis]

12. If you use 10.3.9 BootCD will make a CD you can boot from...

I think Disk Utility is included in the CD (if not you can add it). Note the passwords, read the Read Me. You need to hold down the C key while restarting to boot from the CD. This might help, it is free, and worth trying. It is very slow, but disk utility might be able to repair the disk.

http://www.charlessoft.com/
scroll down..

[bif]

14. I'll give it a try

I tried to repair the disk before from the Disk Utility on my internal harrd drive. And no dice. Error message. But I'll give this a try. Can't hurt.

[bif]

15. Alas, no go.

But at least I now have an emergency boot cd. When I ran the repair disk utility, it gave me the same message as before. Oh well, my friend has Disk Warrier so we'll try that next week. If you think of anything else, feel free to PM me. Thanks again for your help.

[Deja Q]

17. Or DU's own Mac-centric forum...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=233

[tk2kewl]

13. If it looks like this I suggest getting a new one...

[bif]

16. Kick