My iMac does not recognize my Seagate External Harddrive

Are there any plug/wire issues?

Try using Firewire or a different port. Also, restart the hard drive and the computer.

I wonder if all the USB ports are getting the same voltage to each one. I know on a MBP that the left port doesn't have the same output as the one on the right so a USB drive doesn't work on the left. Could be the same with one of the ports on the iMac.

Is it a Seagate FreeAgent Dekstop? I have one. It's a total and utter piece of crap. I was using it to store HD-WMV content for my Xbox360. I used MacDrive to format it to HFS+ (Oddly enough that's the filesystem the 360 can read, not NTFS). For months it worked fine. Then suddenly it wouldn't be recognized by either the 360 or my pc. No rhyme or reason either. Sometimes it would be there. Other times it wouldn't. I got sick of dealing with it so it just sat there. When I got my Mac Pro I decided to check it out again. No dice. Then I started to search online for a possible solution.

Well... Seems like I'm not the only one having these problems. It turns out that the FreeAgent's logic board inside tends to have a fit when dealing with files larger than 4GB. People had said that removing the drive and accessing it directly there were no problems so it's the interface board that's garbage.

So now I'm trying to decide what to do with it. I've got 500GB of content on it that I would like to not lose, but it's a crap shoot as to whether or not it would even show up when connected then as an added bonus, if it is detected, will it lock up Finder or not when trying to transfer the files off?

Cold you get another external enclosure and put the FreeAgent drive in there? I have't seen this yet with mine but I haven't transfered more than about 2 gigs at a time.

MacNewbie03 said:

Cold you get another external enclosure and put the FreeAgent drive in there? I have't seen this yet with mine but I haven't transfered more than about 2 gigs at a time.

Click to expand...

Possibly. I'll have to look into it now that you mention it.

siorai said:

Possibly. I'll have to look into it now that you mention it.

Click to expand...

I hope it works. Mine's a 320 GB that I'm using for Time Machine, would suck to not have a good backup.

Open Disk utility (/Applications/Utilities/) and see if your hard drive shows up on the side.

Also open Apple System Profiler (Apple menu>About this Mac>more info) and see if your hard drive show up there under 'usb'.

If they show up in either of those places, it implies that the problem may be with mounting. You may have accidently turned off mounting hard drive on the desktop. Try turning it back on:

Finder>Preferences>Sidebar>tick hard drives

Well I finally got around to dealing with this. I just disassembled the FreeAgent completely. The drive inside is just a standard Seagate SATA drive. So I just installed it in my Mac Pro and it's fine. I can only assume that doing the same and putting it into a different enclosure will work fine.

I found a work around to this problem

I have a seagate freeagent pro 750 GB external hard drive and a Macbook that rarely recognizes the hard drive. I have tried everything mentioned in this thread. The only thing that works is unplugging all the other usb devices, then only plugging in the seagate external hard drive.

hi, i have a iomega 500gbexternal hard drive which has worked fine up until yesterday, i've tried it on my dads PC and it works fine, it just doesn't show up in finder or on the desktop, system profiler and disk utility both show it? can somebody help me! please!

Have you tried a SMC Reset? I did that once when my Western Digital MyBook stopped responding, even after several power cycles. (Just takes a couple of minutes, and no data on your hard drive is lost.)

I forget the key combination at the moment, but a bit of Googling or better yet MRoogling should provide the steps needed.

my iMac won't recognize my drive either

I have been using the same drive for years to back up all my editing work. I rarely move the drive and I can't remember the last time it was accidentally disconnected. One day it just disappeared from my desktop. the drive is a 1TB Seagate Barracuda and the encasement I bought separately from Macally. I feel like I have tried everything, so for convenience sake I'll list everything I've tried:

-used the firewire 400 cable on another drive (cable works)
-plugged my drive into my dad's macbook pro (still didn't recognize it)
-still running fine (I can hear the drive and the power light comes on)
-left it unplugged for a couple days
-tried daisy chaining it through another drive.(still didn't see it)
-plugged another drive into the same firewire port (recognized that drive)
-tried using USB instead (didn't recognize the drive and I know the cable
works)
-checked disk utility (not there)
-checked system profiler (recognizes it, but takes forever to pull it up)
-checked console (turning on drive did not create a message)
-tried PRAM and SMC reset (tried both a couple of times and still nothing)

My Seagate FreeAgent Go External Drive isn't being recognized either

Hi, My MacBook Pro suddenly won't recognize my Seagate FreeAgent Go External hard drive. It recognized it earlier this evening, but now - nothing!

I can see it in the System Profiler, and the Disk Utility, but every time I plug it into my USB port I get the message that it can't be recognized, and it asks me to "ignore", "repair" or "eject" it.

I don't want to lose the information on it. What can I do?

I was able to fix min by:

click on applications-utilites-disk-utility
then
Disk Utility

In the application, select the hard drive on the left side of the window. Select Erase (aka: reformat) from the top menu. For the volume format, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Type in a name for the hard drive, and click Erase.
It will erase your disk but once its erased it will work and just back up your computer again.
Good luck.

TeachMusic27 said:

Hey Guys,

Quick question. I have an imac running leapord. I also bought an external seagate harddrive to use with time machine. It was working fine for about a month then my mac stopped recognizing the external drive. Any thoughts on what has happened or did I just end up with a faulty external drive??

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Click to expand...

macbook's finder not reading the seagate HDD

hi there

i tried SMC reset on my macbook and the HDD still does not show up in my Finder, are there any other way?

i changed the cable too and didnt work.

i can see the HDD in Apple System Profiler (Apple menu>About this Mac>more info) as well as Disk Utility...

how? pls advice if anyone knows what to do?

i cant lose the information inside the HDD

many thanks!