External hard drive mounting issue

[Ben1l]

Hi can you guys help?

I have a 250 Gb Toshiba External USB Hard drive connected to a main UBS port (not via Keyboard) on my 20" Intel Core Duo iMac , with about 40 Gb used on it. Whenever i turn on my Mac (or the hard drive if the Mac is already on) it takes about 5 minuets for the drive to show up on the desk top. Going to disk utility doesn’t help. It just gets stuck in the "Gathering Disk Information" stage. Also the Activity LED on the External Hard drive goes crazy while this is happening. Any ideas how i can get the External hard drive to mount a bit faster or at least does anyone know why it takes so long?

 

[MacsRgr8]

It seems to me either the filesystem on that HD is damaged, or there is an issue with the USB.
If you can, try making a backup of that drive, and then erase it. Better still, try to create a new single partition on it.
You must do this in Disk Utility, so let that "Gathering Disk Information" spin for a while. I have the feeling after some time (i.e. maybe up to 10 mins), it will get there.

It could be an USB issue too. That's tougher to find out. Can you connect it to another PC or Mac?