Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

kingmob66 · Jul 8, 2008, 11:49 AM

Hello,

I'm at wit's end trying to solve this problem. I have a Western Digital 200gb drive that I've been using for storing media. Yesterday, the drive wouldn't eject (as sometimes items won't). However, when i plugged it back in, OSX (Leopard) won't mount the drive. Here are some specifics.

1--the device shows up in Disk Edit, but not with the particular volume name (i.e. it just lists as 189 GB WDC...etc".). As such, it won't let me run verify or repair options. Sometimes, the drive does register in Disk Edit with the volume name, but it is grayed out (and unmounted), and verify/repair seems to hang...

2--it is not the USB cable, or the port--I've tried a thumb-drive in the slot and OSX picks it up immediately.

3--I've to use a number of salvage programs to view the drive's contents, but with no luck--I haven't done anything other than try to mount or peek at the contents using them.

I've read about FSCK on a couple of message boards, but am not an experienced command-line user enough to figure it out.

Is there anything I can do at the command/terminal level, to get the disk to remount? Is there any way short of sending out the drive for salvage, to get access to the drive's content?

Would appreciate any input/insight some of you more experienced mac users might be able to shed on this problem. I'd really hate to lose over 100gb of media i have stored on the drive...

Many thanks!

Kingmob66

imitchellg5 · Jul 9, 2008, 03:43 PM

Have you tried putting it in another case? It sounds like perhaps the case is messed up. I can't be sure, but I think that the drive is fine, it might just be an interface issue.

kingmob66 · Jul 10, 2008, 10:12 AM

Thanks. I'll give that a shot--I was experiencing some minor power issues with the drive (it would kind of lose power for a second (not long enough to unmount, but long enough to make it so that I couldn't access it). I hadn't thought that it might be the enclosure. I ordered a new one on Ebay and will try it out as soon as i get it. Thanks for the suggestion--i'll post on how it turns out.

OreoCookie · Jul 10, 2008, 11:38 AM

The power problems might have corrupted the data structures on the drive, so I don't think Leopard has anything to do with it.

If the data structures are corrupted, you need something like Data Rescue or DiskWarrior. (For data retrieval, Data Rescue is definitely the way to go.)

kingmob66 · Jul 10, 2008, 02:23 PM

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

The power problems might have corrupted the data structures on the drive, so I don't think Leopard has anything to do with it.

If the data structures are corrupted, you need something like Data Rescue or DiskWarrior. (For data retrieval, Data Rescue is definitely the way to go.)

I have tried these programs (as well as the disk utility program) and they hang for hours in the "scanning for devices" phase. You're right, i don't think Leopard has anything to do with the problems--I'm just hoping a new drive enclosure helps.
Thanks!

OreoCookie · Jul 10, 2008, 06:18 PM

Data Rescue will need several hours to scan your harddrive. Because it literally does just that. Just let it work, it might easily take 8-18 hours, depending on the size of the drive and your interface.

kingmob66 · Jul 11, 2008, 08:17 AM

I don't think i was clear. Data rescue hangs during the DETECT Drives phase--i let it run overnight and by morning it had not detected any usb device, mounted or unmounted. It never gets a chance to scan the device (which i think is corroborated by the fact that the external harddrive shows no signs of being accessed (either in terms of the drive light or the sounds it makes).

kingmob66 · Jul 15, 2008, 10:06 AM

Just to update those that may be curious (or have had similar problems), my drive is again working! Here's the story and what i did:

I got a new enclosure yesterday and after installing the drive and powering the thing up, nothing happened (i.e., the drive did not mount. leaving the drive plugged in, I ran Data Rescue II. After about 5 minutes, the program was able to pull up my drive structure and salvage basically all of the files! I moved a few directories to my Mac's HD and decided to do the rest when i had more time (and drive space). I shut down Data Rescue and powered the drive off. As soon as I did this, I got the "unsafe device removal message." Curious, I powered up the drive, and sure enough, it mounted! For the sake of experimentation, I reinstalled the drive in the old enclosure, powered it up, and nothing happened--so i conclude that it was the enclosure (b/c when I plugged it back into the new enclosure, it worked like a charm). Since then I've run scans and repairs on the drive, and nothing has come up as negative.

I'm not sure why the drive did not initially mount when i powered it up on the new case. I have 2 theories:
1--it needed time to detect, being a new hardware device.
2--in scanning the drive Data Rescue II repaired something?

If anyone has a clue why this actually happened, I'd like to hear it, for curiosity sake.
At any rate, thanks to all that responded. I'm off to back up my HD!

Kingmob66

OreoCookie · Jul 15, 2008, 10:32 AM

I'm glad you were able to recover your data