External Harddrive Problem

[ajvizzgamer101]

lol, Sorry I am having all these problems at once. I have a problem with my harddrive now. Recently I lost all my files on my Internal Harddrive so I started to use my external harddrive and Time Machine. Well it was working fine and dandy till yesterday. For some odd reason it's not connected to Time Machine but when I try to connect it to Time Machine it won't let me.

EDIT: I have one of those Western Digital Drives

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

please explain in more detail. such as the size of the disk, notebook drive or desktop drive, which brand, your OS 10.5.x.

 

[ajvizzgamer101]

111.47 GB
Western Digital Drive
Macbook Pro (Notebook Drive)
OS 10.5.4

 

[ajvizzgamer101]

I am going to Bump this topic because this is important.
I will go over the problem again in more detail... When I plug in my Western Digital external hard drive into my Macbook Pro to backup the hard drive using Time Machine no Icon appears on the desktop to indicate that the harddrive is recognized and nothing appears in the Disk Utility. It's also saying I didn't configure Time Machine but I know I did because I used this hard drive many times before.

 

[aross99]

Are you using USB or Firewire?

Is it externally powered?

Have you tried other ports (including USB if you were using Firewire, etc)?

When it is connected, launch the system profiler (Apple Menu/About this Mac/More Info) and click on Firewire or USB (depending on which you are using at the time), and see if it registers the drive interface...

Could be the drive, or the port you are using. My daughter has an iMac G5 with an external drive connected using Firewire. I have to reboot her machine and reset the firewire ports once in a while, when the drive fails to show up.

 

[cuestakid]

can you hear the drive spinning or see any lights? If so, then try to connect the drive to a different port-ie use FW instead of USB or FW400 instead of FW800 and vise versa. Do you have another computer-if so try to connect the drive to it. I will mention that if your extra machine is a PC, try looking in disk management to see if the device is there-if not download MacDrive and install it-the trial is fine I just want to see if the drive can be mounted anywhere

 

[cuestakid]

Are you using USB or Firewire?

Is it externally powered?

Have you tried other ports (including USB if you were using Firewire, etc)?

When it is connected, launch the system profiler (Apple Menu/About this Mac/More Info) and click on Firewire or USB (depending on which you are using at the time), and see if it registers the drive interface...

Could be the drive, or the port you are using. My daughter has an iMac G5 with an external drive connected using Firewire. I have to reboot her machine and reset the firewire ports once in a while, when the drive fails to show up.

took the words out of my mouth

 

[DoFoT9]

step 1.

restart your computer.

try again.

step 2.
try on a different computer (even if its on a PC, it wont read it but it certainly may recognisde that there is a drive being plugged in)

step 3.
dismantle the external HD and reassemble it to make sure everything is done properly.

step 4....
pray to god one of my suggestions worked.