HDD not mounting on desktop!

[212rikanmofo]

I have a Western Digital My Studio external HD that doesn't seem to be working too well. I'm not sure what the deal is. Sometime it won't mount on my desktop while its connected. I tried turning it off/on several times but you can hear the motor. It seems to be spinning up and then down and then up. However I got it to mount a few times on my desktop and was able to read/write to it without any problems. I decided to open up and remove the actual bare HDD and insert it directly into my PowerMac G5 tower. It immediately detected it upon bootup and mounted fine on my desktop. But today upon booting up into Mac OS X the drive won't mount at all after several attempts of restarting. The odd problem is that the drive is perfectly listed under my Disk Utility app. Everything looks okay from what I can tell as far as the SMART STATUS and etc. Can someone please tell me what is wrong? If Disk Utility manages to detect the drive does this mean its safe to assume that I can fix this problem and have the drive actually mount on my desktop so that I can access the files on it? I'd sure to lose 1TB of information.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Hellhammer]

So you have tried repairing the HD with Disk Utility? It's possible that the HD is defective, especially if the issue exists in two different scenarios

 

[212rikanmofo]

Yes I repaired it in disk utility already and did the fsck thing upon bootup as well to made sure it fixed the drive.

Drive shows up fine under disk utility but it doesn't appear on my desktop at all. This is the slave drive by the way. I have 2 physical HDD in my G5 tower. 1 is the main Mac OS and the other is just the storage. It's the storage drive that is giving me problems.

 

[Fishrrman]

"Can someone please tell me what is wrong? If Disk Utility manages to detect the drive does this mean its safe to assume that I can fix this problem and have the drive actually mount on my desktop so that I can access the files on it? I'd sure to lose 1TB of information."

If you don't want to "lose 1tb of information", than you had better think about getting ANOTHER drive RIGHT AWAY and get your data backed up onto it, if you can.

Snooze, and I promise you, that you're going to "lose".

I'd suggest you get one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=usb+sata+dock&x=0&y=0
(many items shown, pick the one you like best)

...and then get yourself a "bare drive" of 1tb capacity. I recommend Seagate drives, and a good vendor is newegg.com.

Once you have this, get it mounted up on the desktop and initialize it with Disk Utility (I suggest that you use a "GUID" partition scheme, and DO NOT use a hybrid Mac/PC partition scheme).

Then, begin the process of transferring your data from one drive to the other. I'd suggest CarbonCopyCloner, which will "clone" the contents of the WD drive to the new drive in the dock.

Once you have done this, you might consider re-initializing the WD drive, and then re-copying data back to it.

But I wouldn't trust the WD drive until you get the mounting problems resolved. That's why it's essential that -- if you value what's on the drive -- you get it copied over to another drive right away.

 

[balamw]

I agree with Fishrrman.

Stop trusting this drive ASAP.

I have a WD Passport that has a similar story. Was using it for nearline storage and it suddenly would no longer mount and corrupted the FAT32 system on the drive. I stopped trusting it and put it aside even though it passed all diagnostics.

Recently, like you, I decided to remove it from the enclosure and see if I could make some hay with it. Worked great passed all diagnostics, but then a week later it won't even spin up anymore.

Some drives are (or become) duds. If you value your data, make sure it exists somewhere else as well.

B

 

[212rikanmofo]

thanks for the advice guys. I may have to do what you suggest as a last resort sigh. The drive actually manage to show up on my desktop after a few reboots however i couldnt copy any files from it, and it would disappear from the desktop after that. I'm not sure what the deal is. When I try to boot from my Mac OS install DVD and go to disk utility. The drive shows up fine with the 2 partitions on there show up as well. I tried to run a disk repair and it would start and then seem to freeze up. Is it too late to even run out and order an HDD dock? I'm thinking the problem could be the controller thats attached to the HD has gone bad? Because I can hear the drive spin up and make some clicking noises and then stop and spin up again, looks like its trying to spin and read but can't. Perhaps the controller has gone bad but the data is still there an intact it seems. Because all my files seem to showed up when the actual drive got mounted.

 

[balamw]

It probably is just the board. You may be able to replace it with one from eBay.

Still once you do that get the data off to another drive.

B

 

[212rikanmofo]

balam, if it is the controller board on the HDD Itself can I just take one from another drive and slap it on? I have about 2 or 3 other HDD laying around. Or does it need to be a specific kind?

All my HDD are Western Digital if that makes a difference?

 

[balamw]

balam, if it is the controller board on the HDD Itself can I just take one from another drive and slap it on? I have about 2 or 3 other HDD laying around. Or does it need to be a specific kind?

All my HDD are Western Digital if that makes a difference?

Depends on the drive. They generally need to be the same "generation" of drive. Generally each board will have identifying model numbers, replace it with the same model and rev board and it may work.

The problem is that as drives have evolved sometimes now the bad sector information is stored on the controller so if you switch controller, you can potentially corrupt the data on the drive.

B