External drives not mounting on my iMac

[henryspencer]

Hello everyone,

I recently encountered a pretty wierd problem with my 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac running Leopard version 10.5.2. I have two external drives, a lacie and a western digital. The two drives has always worked fine, with no problems at all. But suddenly, the drives simply won't mount on my iMac. I have tried with every connection possible; Firewire 400 and 800 and even the USB port. No luck. When I connect the drive it lights up and starts to make a sound, like it normally does. But no luck mounting them both...

The funny thing is; I have a crappy 4 year old iBook running Leopard.. The drives mount every single time on that little sucker. Can someone please inform me on what kind of silly game my iMac is playing on me?

Thanks in advance guys!

 

[CaptainChunk]

This may sound stupid, but have you tried rebooting your iMac?

 

[henryspencer]

I have tried that up to several times.. Close, but no sigar.

 

[merl1n]

I have tried that up to several times.. Close, but no sigar.

Reset your PRAM and do a Safe Boot. Most likely you have a corrupted PRAM or have a bad hardware cache file.

 

[henryspencer]

Ok, I did that two times now merl1n.. But the hard drives still won't mount..

Both of them won't even mount in Safe Mode... This iMac is starting to drive me crazy.

 

[henryspencer]

Well, thanks for the help guys

I found the solution! So I thought I would post it here for further reference to other people maybe expericing the same problem.

Turn off the system and un-plug everyting.. USB stuff, printers, network cables, etc. And most importantly; pull out the power plug. Now wait for 15 seconds, or 1 minute to be completly sure.. This resets something in your mac. I don't know spesifically, but it doesn't matter. Important thing is that it fixes the problem.

Now put the power plug back in an start your computer. This should reset stuff and you should now be able to mount the external drives.

It worked for me and I hope it works for you!

 

[merl1n]

Well, thanks for the help guys

I found the solution! So I thought I would post it here for further reference to other people maybe expericing the same problem.

Turn off the system and un-plug everyting.. USB stuff, printers, network cables, etc. And most importantly; pull out the power plug. Now wait for 15 seconds, or 1 minute to be completly sure.. This resets something in your mac. I don't know spesifically, but it doesn't matter. Important thing is that it fixes the problem.

Now put the power plug back in an start your computer. This should reset stuff and you should now be able to mount the external drives.

It worked for me and I hope it works for you!

That is also known as an "SMC/SMU" reset which would have been my next suggestion. Glad you figured it out.