iMac 27' won't recognize my external hard drive

[calitomartinez]

Hey guys, I have a big problem with my external hard drive. It's a western digital my passport studio firewire. My mac suddenly stop recognizing it, and I can't repair it from disk utility. I got to repair it once from the disk utility but after a week or so got the same problem and I can't be repaired anymore.

Here's what I get from disk utility.

Verify and Repair volume "disk1s3"
Checking file system
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
The volume could not be verified completely
Volume repair complete
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required
Error: Disk Utility can't repair this disk...disk, and restore your backed-up files

Is there anyway to get it working without losing my information? I got like 990gb there and no backup.

Thanks guys. Sorry for the crappy english.

 

[yjchua95]

Hey guys, I have a big problem with my external hard drive. It's a western digital my passport studio firewire. My mac suddenly stop recognizing it, and I can't repair it from disk utility. I got to repair it once from the disk utility but after a week or so got the same problem and I can't be repaired anymore.

Here's what I get from disk utility.

Verify and Repair volume "disk1s3"
Checking file system
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
The volume could not be verified completely
Volume repair complete
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required
Error: Disk Utility can't repair this disk...disk, and restore your backed-up files

Is there anyway to get it working without losing my information? I got like 990gb there and no backup.

Thanks guys. Sorry for the crappy english.

Your hard drive is on its way out. Get a new one.

And I'm stymied by the number of people who never make backups.

I think the best way to recover your data is to shell out USD 99 and buy Disk Warrior.

 

[Fishrrman]

If NOTHING ELSE works, you might try this:

1. Re-initialize the drive to HFS+, journaling enabled (that is not an error, yes, I do mean to re-initialize it!)
IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT!
Do not, repeat DO NOT choose the "zero out data" option when doing the re-initialization. If you zero out the data, it will be lost forever.

2. The drive (hopefully) will now mount on the desktop -- but it will appear "empty", that is, no files on it. (reality: the files are still there, out on the sectors of the drive, but the bad directory has been wiped clean, so as far as the directory is concerned, the drive is empty)

3. Run data recovery software such as "DataRescue3" on the drive. DR3 will "look around" the "empty" directory, go right to the drive sectors, scavenge and find what data is there, and re-assemble the data.

3a. You -will- need to buy -another- drive to serve as a "scrach drive" to receive the re-assembled files.
3b. You -will- lose all previous folder hierarchies, and probably will lose all previous file names as well. This is to be expected with data recovery software.

What you read above is ONLY for a last-ditch effort to get at the data.
But it worked for me when nothing else would...