External HD unrecognized

[chuckd62687]

I just received a WD MyBook Pro 250GB Extrenal HD yesterday. It installed fine and I consequently moved all of my music and videos over to then new drive. I was given some bad advice by an Apple Genius about moving my iTunes library and now iTunes won't recognize my old or new library. When I went to open iTunes this morning to continue to recover my library I got the swirling rainbow for numerous minutes and couldn't get it to force quit. I powered off my iMac and since that time my iMac won't recognize my external HD. Any ideas? Thanks.

[Erendiox]

Have you tried opening disk utility? Sometimes it will be recognized there and not in the finder. If it appears in disk utility, try mounting it. If it doesn't mount, try repairing it. If none of that works, try unplugging the drive for awhile, including powering it down. Wait a few minutes then plug everything back up.

Hope this helps. Keep us informed :)

[chuckd62687]

It does not show up in Disk Utility or System profiler. I powered it off and unplugged it for several minutes and I still get the same behavior. I am also unable to find the "WD BUtton Software" that came with it. I re-installed it and I still can't find it.

[Erendiox]

Hmm... not sure what to tell you at this point. When the drive doesn't show up in disk utility that usually indicates something serious. At this point I would ask you how old the drive is, cause it sounds like it's kicked the bucket, but since it's brand new, I can only assume you have a lemon and you need to exchange it.

There's not much more you can do as far as recovery unless you want to invest in some software. I can tell you from experience that Diskwarrior (http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/) is an excellent piece of software and it's saved drives more than once for me. It costs $$ though, and in your case you can just get it replaced because it's brand new. I hope you didn't delete the originals of whatever you put on there yet did you?

[skinnylegs]

Do you have access to another computer? I would try plugging it in to another computer and see what happens. HD's shouldn't really require any software unless you are using a backup utility of sorts.

[chuckd62687]

I switched from FireWire to USB and it is working now. I am guessing the FireWire port on the HD went bad as I had already tried both of my FireWire ports before. Any ideas how I can confirm this?

[tilman]

I switched from FireWire to USB and it is working now. I am guessing the FireWire port on the HD went bad as I had already tried both of my FireWire ports before. Any ideas how I can confirm this?

Same thing happened to me with a NewerTech MiniStack. One day it stopped showing up when plugged in through the Firewire connection, but works fine when hooked up through USB. It spins up when hooked up to Firewire, it just doesn't get recognized.

There's not much you can do at that point, except maybe for trying it on a different computer. Just to make sure it's the Firewire port on the drive, not the one in the computer. And try another cable, just in case.

[4np]

Perhaps the hd is partitioned with a filesystem that is not supported by OS X? Or maybe is not partitioned at all?

[tilman]

Perhaps the hd is partitioned with a filesystem that is not supported by OS X? Or maybe is not partitioned at all?

The OP's drive seems to be just fine, as it works when hooked up through USB. It's only the Firewire side of the setup that will not work.

And regardless of partitions or filesystem, it should show up in Disk Utility. Another place to look is in the "System Profiler" in Applications -> Utilities. There's an entry for "FireWire", and one for "USB" under "Hardware".

[chuckd62687]

The drive was partitioned yesterday and working fine via Firrewire.

[chuckd62687]

I have confirmed with WD that my firewire port is dead. :mad:

Thanks for all of the help.