External hard drive not recognized

[georgegarrigues]

Another one of those "external hard drive not recognized" problems:

I am using a Mac Mini. The external LaCie drive is in one of those beautiful boxes designed by a guy named Porsche. It's connected via Fire Wire. I have my iPhoto library stored on it. It was working just fine for the past two days after I first connected it.

Now it does not show on the Desktop. It is identified only as "Unknown device" in "About This Mac." iPhoto doesn't recognize it. I've looked at the other threads on this subject here and have reset the PRAM.

Disk Utility recognized it for a while and said the disk was OK. Now Disk Utility does not recognize it at all.

I turned off the drive and turned it back on. That resulted in an alarming series of beeps, almost like somebody was sending the Morse code symbol for "E" over and over again. I turned the drive off and then on again. Now the light goes on and the drive whirs nicely. It sits there balefully waiting for — what? A call by the Master Computer to revolt against us humans? I think so.

I am using System 10.6.2. Or rather, at this point it is using me.

Sincerely, your pal, George

 

[georgegarrigues]

More on this problem: I turned off the external drive, went to bed, awoke the next morning, turned the drive back on, rebooted, and now I can "see" the drive in all the proper places, and Disk Utility says it is in fine shape.

I suppose just letting it rest for a while did the job?

But now I can't open my iPhoto library, which is on that drive, so I suppose I will have to reinstall iPhoto.

Sincerely,

George

 

[georgegarrigues]

No, iPhoto works just fine

Still more: iPhoto works just fine when I choose the old iPhoto library (still on my internal drive). It does not work with the new library (on the external drive); it is not recognizing the new library.