[jlcrane]

I have read that many mac users have experienced problems with external drives crashing and not being recognized by the operating system. Mine recently crashed and now no longer is recognized by osx. I have no way of accessing my HD. At first, disk utility would show that it existed, now it is non-existent. I need to access this data but have no clue how. My other external drive sometimes drops for no reason. This is very confusing. Many have talked about osx 10.4 being buggy. Can someone offer some help or is my drive damaged beyond repair? Other software I have used (Filesalvage, Data Rescue) cannot find it either. Thanks.

[0157988944]

Sounds like a damaged drive to me... not so much OS X's problem, but I wouldn't completely rule it out. Do you have any other computer's to test with?

[macryan]

As a last ditch effort you might try a different enclosure. Perhaps the drive is okay but something in the enclosure failed. I would assume that you have tried different cables.

[jlcrane]

That is a good idea. I haven't tried that yet.

[anselm]

You have a better chance with FW than with USB 2.0.

You can also connect the drive interanlly to your Mac. In case of an iMac it`s probably possible to connect the 2nd HDD instead of the optical drive (just untill you tried to get your data back).