HELP! Disk not mounting, should I repair?

[Jebaloo]

Hi, I made a foolish mistake, firstly by placing very important files only on one drive temporarily whilst doing some maintenance, and secondly by pulling that drive out of my computer without ejecting it in a momentary lapse of concentration.

Now it won't mount, and I need those files!

Quirks: When I go into disk utility, the program doesn't seem to find any disks until I pull out the disk in question, and then all of a sudden it finds all my disks incluing the one I just pulled out. I then plugged the drive back in again and ran Verify - which just ran and ran and never stopped. I tried to press 'mount', but it said 'this drive cannot mount, try first aid'.

Back to square one.

What do I do!? Should I do disk repair? Will this wipe my drive? Any suggestions?

info: the drive is a 160gb usb WD passport phantom powered drive, with only about 10gb of stuff on it. I'm running a new MacBook, 2Ghz, 2Gb.

 

[FJ218700]

I've never lost data when repairing permissions, then again, I have never tried it on an unmounted drive. Not sure if this will even work. What does "verify disk permissions" tell you?

 

[mad jew]

I don't think we're talking about permissions. Repairing the disk (if it can be done) shouldn't lose any of your data. Give it a go if you can. Good luck.

 

[Jebaloo]

Thanks for your help on that.

As per usual, it fixed itself. I stopped worrying, went and had dinner, and came back to find a nicely happy mounted WD drive.

I'll be much more careful in the future.

Thanks again.

 

[mad jew]

Verify the drive in Disk Utility nonetheless. Verifying the drive will make absolutely no changes to it so you needn't worry. However, if it asks to be repaired then obviously do it.