External Hard Drive - Help! Please

[intoxicated662]

I upgraded to Lion a couple of months back and all was fine. I was using a Maxtor 1TB external hard drive for saving all of my music, photos and such things. It was all working fine up until yesterday. I checked for 'Software Update' and it prompted me for 3 new items. 1 was for iTunes and the other 2 I forgot what they were for (something about security risk?) and ever since I installed those software updates my 1tb external hard drive is not recognized. I see it light up blue when powered on, hear the disk spinning and all but nothing happens. I've tried various usb ports, connecting it on a different computer, disk utility, reboot with Control+Option+P+R and just about everything I could possibly try via google search and nothing helped. I have also tried different programs like Data Rescue 3, TechTool Pro 6 and none work. Is there a fix to this? Any way to revert the last couple of updates and remove them??

I've got almost 400gb of important files I do not want to lose and appreciate any help. Thanks

I am using an iMac on Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3, Mid 2010 model, 3.06 GHz Intel Core i3, 4GB Ram.


Was able to find the last couple of updates I got:

iMac EFI Firmware Update Version 1.8 (2-19-2012)
Airport Utility Version 6.0 (2-18-2012)
Mac OS X Update Combined Version 10.7.3 (2-18-2012)
iTunes Version 10.5.3 (2-18-2012)

 

[robgendreau]

If it will not mount on another computer it's the external that's hosed, not your Mac. When you say the other stuff wouldn't help, what do you mean? You couldn't mount the drive?

 

[intoxicated662]

Yeah, couldn't mount the drive. I did all the tips I found via google search and on here as well. Even tried to recover the data myself on my iMac with a few different apps but no luck. So today, I took it to Staples, Comp USA and a local pc repair store and they all said it's failing to spin. The components are faulty and the drive isn't spinning. It's trying to spin but fails to. I suppose there's no way to get the data off of there now is there? Had over 300gb of music, photos and other things I wanted to save. What would be the best external hard drive to buy for an iMac to use as a backup/time machine? Looking to get something small and portable, about 1tb at least or more just depends. Read that the Lacie's aren't too well with mac's.

 

[Bear]

You're going to have people give conflicting suggestions. And that's all based on what experiences they have had with hard drives.

First a size suggestion. The price difference between a 1GB and 2GB external drive is not that much and will save you from having issues later with backup space. It will also allow Time Machine to keep additional older backups.

Remember you don't want your active data and your backup on the same disk. (Eggs in one basket thing.)

Now as for brand, I would recommend Seagate GoFlex Desk. Preferably the Firewire/USB version. Firewire is noticeably faster than USB.

I have an aversion to Western Digital. Although I don't hear as many bad things about them as I used to hear.

 

[intoxicated662]

Yeah, the brand I was recommended was Seagate. Would it be better off to get Apple's Time Capsule (2tb newer model for $299) or a 1tb (maybe 2 of them, separate though) external hard drive that is portable? I was really interested in the Time Capsule but they're not being carried anywhere anymore, even Amazon doesn't have them in stock and the only company selling them that is reliable is Apple.