HELP... External drive not mounting.

[Topher15]

I just updated to 10.5.6. When I restarted my iMac my external hard drive (which is split into two partitions - one for storage, one for Time Machine) does not mount.

Disk Utility does show the hard drive and only one of the partitions (the storage one). I've verified it which shows no problems.

I've tried to connect it with both FW 800, FW 400 and USB to no avail.

So I'm thinking this was the 10.5.6 upgrade, right? Well I've just tried to connect it to my MacBook (which I've not upgraded yet) and the same thing described above happens. I've never connected to the MB before so I don't know it it is the OS upgrade.

Any ideas? Help is much appreciated. I hope my all my media/back up isn't gone.

 

[Topher15]

UPDATE...

Got it to work, kinda.

I first installed the 10.5.6 Combo update, which did nothing. I then "verified disk permissions" and then "verified disk" on my main (internal) HD, then I verified the external drive again (which at the time only showed the storage partition). Both partitions then showed and mounted. I got a message saying the Time Machine partition was running as read only and that it need to be restored. I guess I can do this and restart by backups from scratch, although I'm going to try and make it writable first, if it is possible.

I tried to verify the Time Machine partition only it gave me the following:

What does this mean?

 

[geoffreak]

Periodically my hard drive doesn't mount and the only way to have it mount again is to restart the computer and reset the hard drive (unplug and replug the power)

 

[Topher15]

Yeah I tried that, with three different cables and two computers. Even if the update did cause the problems, it seems the only real solution is to format.

Interestingly last night the storage partition mounted fine but was read only, then it suddenly change to read and write, now this morning it isn't showing at all.

I've saved all the content elsewhere and I'm just going to give in a format it.