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2 Problems Can't write to external. Now external won't mount.

M

meagain

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Nov 18, 2006
2,571
26
I've not Time Machine'd in about 3 weeks. After working fine for several months, out of the blue I get this error. I think it was -61? "Get Info" said it was read only. I couldn't figure out how to make it write & read. Now, out of the blue, I can't even mount it.

I'm at a loss. My iMac is on it's last legs and I'm playing with fire. I guess the first order of business is to mount the thing but it just does nothing or IDK how to force it to do this?

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.
 
Go to disk utility and verify the disk, if it comes up with any problems, hit the repair button. You could also to repair the permissions on the disk as well.
 
Thank you for responding to me. I feel I'm on the verge of losing everything right now.

That's one of the problems. I open Disk Utility and see the drive on the left as usual. But under the First Aid tab - 'everything' is grayed out. I'm at a loss as to why. I do not see it in Finder. It's like it won't mount or something.
???
 
Maybe try to boot up from your install disk and run disk utility and see if you get a different result
 
I have the original Tiger discs that came with my iMac and my Leopard discs. I tried the Disk Utility app on the discs that came with my computer but it won't launch. Too old? And in Leopard, I can't seem to find it.

I don't understand why I'd see it in my Disk Utility (and not be able to do anything in there).... But not see it mounted in my Finder. I'm going to try plugging it into another computer. Maybe it's toast? (I'll die). Oddly, the thing is flashing colors as if it's 'doing' something but it's not. Acomdata.
 
I finally got to run Disk Utility on it and did 'verify disk'. Got a "First Aid Failed. DU stopped verifying "Time Machine" becuase the following error - Filesystem verify or repair failed. In the details box, it says "invalid index key the volume needs to be repaired".

:| But it doesn't say how I can repair it. This doesn't look good does it.
 
meagain said:
I finally got to run Disk Utility on it and did 'verify disk'. Got a "First Aid Failed. DU stopped verifying "Time Machine" becuase the following error - Filesystem verify or repair failed. In the details box, it says "invalid index key the volume needs to be repaired".

:| But it doesn't say how I can repair it. This doesn't look good does it.
Click to expand...

That sounds like it may be a major HD hardware failure. You might get better results with Disk Warrior or it might report the same failure to repair.

I did have a corrupted file system once that Disk Warrior was able to repair where Disk Utility was not. That was on a working HD though, just a corrupted partition.

Best of luck in recovering your data.
 
:) I played around with DiskWarrior last night and kept getting an error (32). I was running it from my HD and I'm not sure if that's proper. Then I went to disk utility again and oddly, the "repair disk" showed up finally.

I hit repair disk and am getting "invalid index key". I'm going to try Disk Warrior again in a bit. I've yet to look up Invalid Index Key to see if that means doom.
 
RE: 2 problems...

RE:
"I feel I'm on the verge of losing everything right now"

If you're that worried, here's what to do:

1. Download SuperDuper! from this page:
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

2. Choose to do a "safety clone" (full backup) of your iMac's internal drive to the external drive. Use the "erase first" option to fully erase the external first. (you don't even have to pay the registration fee to do this, SuperDuper lets you do it for free)

3. Your time machine backups will be lost, but will be replaced by an exact, bootable copy of the contents of your internal drive.

4. If you don't want to risk the contents of the external, check this deal over at dealmac.com:
http://dealmac.com/La-Cie-2.5-250-G...0-Hard-Drive-for-50-free-shipping/307472.html

- John
 
Well, I can't get into the external now so I guess it doesn't matter if I try erasing. But the external won't mount so I can't use SuperDuper either. I can erase it via Disk Utility as that's the only place that sees it. There ARE things on there that aren't on my iMac so this does suck.

I guess I need a RAID dealie.
 
RE: 2 Problems

RE:
"I can erase it via Disk Utility as that's the only place that sees it. There ARE things on there that aren't on my iMac so this does suck. "

If Disk Utility can "see" it to erase it, that seems to indicate that the drive itself is OK, hardware-wise, and that the problems are directory-related.

I'm surprised that DU can see it to erase it, but that you can't use the "Repair disk" option....

You might try a demo copy of "data rescue" on it, to see if DR can see it and the files that are on it, as well.

Again, if Disk Utility can erase the drive, my suggestion is to erase it and then "dupe" the contents of your hard drive to the external using SuperDuper.

If you're worried about backing up stuff on the external (things that aren't on your _internal_ drive), then it's time to start thinking about keeping TWO external drives around. You can never have too many backups... :)

- John
 
It's been a big ball of weird for 3 days (John the Fisherman?) :)

On the Disk Utility, it would periodically show 1 title or 2 titles. No rhyme/reason. It would never let me erase it.

Oddly, twice in the past 3 days I got an error message pop up out of the blue saying basically "your drive sucks but we're allowing you in for a brief period of time so you can try to recover things". Last night, I caught this window and successfully pulled out the couple of files (personal movies)! So I got what I needed out of it.

Then this morning, I go to erase again and it actually let me! Just a few minutes ago!!! So it did that and asked if I wanted to run a time machine backup!

IT'S BACKING UP RIGHT NOW!!! :eek: It even showed the external in the Time Machine settings and everything. Course - I can't trust the darned thing anymore but at least it's functioning till I can get a REAL backup system.

John - So you are saying I shouldn't have done a TM backup but more "cloned" the iMac to the external? I don't think I can clone? it with SuperDuper AND do a TM backup on it as it's only 500gb and my iMac is about 230. Or can I? But should I stop and erase my TM backup and do as you say now?

Figuring out backup systems is quite hard and morphs into the Home networking arena which is so not my thing. My husband is in charge of that and also the 14k+ iTunes library which is REALLY in need of backup help. I think maybe the OWC Maximus RAID 1 or the Silver version for that but it might be overkill for me. IDK if we can both use that machine without a mess. I have an AEBS with 2 500gb Buffalo Nas (or just one)? And I'm super-unclear how to properly tie them all together cleanly. There was a TC on Craigs that I missed out on and that almost made me cry as my goal is to wirelessly back up this iMac as it's in a living space and I don't want a drive on it all the time ideally.

My husband better give me props when back in town from his trip for getting this external to work don't you think? Maybe running the TechTool Pro & Diskwarrior on it (despite showing as FAIL), did 'something' to it to allow the Erase.
 
I have a Maxtor laying around here which my hubby can't get to work with his POS Toshiba lappy and I can't get to work with my Macs but it's the same size. So maybe? Actually maybe I'll have another go at that one since I've become a bit more edumacated.

You raise a good point tho. The enclosure stuff. Like if I buy a RAID 1, if the enclosure guts & bridge thing fail, then both drives are toast to me unless I have another enclosure on hand to pop a drive in? That's the other thing I need to learn about - enclosure compatability. Maybe all 3.5 enclosures are the same for all I know.

But it seems to be acting right for now. For now.
 
It's working now for some reason. I was able to erase etc. finally. Thank you all for your help!!
 
If I was you after you get it fixed backup up to another drive or some other media. My old drive did this off and on for about 3 weeks before kicking the bucket one day : ( I was so glad I had backups though :)
 
Yes. That's tomorrow's project. Going to try SuperDuper. (Then probably head over to OWC for some online shopping) :) Thank you.
 
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