I am fuming! One of my three external hard drives would kept on ejecting when it the iMac went to sleep and today it quit reading all together. It said the disk was unreadable even thought it had been working perfectly the day before. So, I plugged it into my old PC laptop and it says that it is completely free with nothing on it! I am freaking out. All of my family photos, music, Graduate school work, all missing. Is there any way to get this back to working?
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My new iMac just deleted an entire external HD
- Thread starter zbzb22
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The files are not deleted, it may just that the header of the partition table is corrupt.
You can try Disk Utility to repair the disk, and if that does not help, the is a software called Data Rescue (now in version 3), that scans that HDD and will restore all the data, unless it is overwritten, which won't be the case.
You can try Disk Utility to repair the disk, and if that does not help, the is a software called Data Rescue (now in version 3), that scans that HDD and will restore all the data, unless it is overwritten, which won't be the case.
OS X does that sometimes. Just keep plugging it in and unplugging it until it works. I had that issue and that seemed to work for me. Once you get it mounted, back everything up, and then format the drive. Also check the drive for errors.
By chance do you have the stuff backed up?
By chance do you have the stuff backed up?
I do not have it backed up. I've plugged it in a few times and nothing. I have put a call in to Apple and will talk to them tomorrow.
So please reassure me here, I never deleted or secure trashed anything on that hard drive so everything should still be in there somewhere, right? The only thing that worries me is I when I plugged it back in to my old pc it showed the drive as being empty.
You may not have seen the files from your PC if it's an older version of windows or the permissions were different..
Can you post a screenshot of disk utility with the HD turned on and connected to your iMac?
New to mac so I really do not know how to do that yet. What information are you looking for exactly?
I can do just that! First off, I'm going to assume that because you've been using the hard drive on your mac and on your windows computers, that it's been formatted as FAT32. Now, assuming the worst case scenario (that doesn't involve a physically broken drive), the date is still there, there's just no pointers to it.
This program will work on your windows computer, it will scan each sector of the hard drive, and where a file appears, it will save it to another drive. Even if the data was deleted, as long as it wasn't over-written, it's still there and you can recover it.
Here's the link. http://drewhoffman.net/REST2514.EXE
EDIT: It's a pain though, it doesn't keep file names or folder structure, but it gets the data. In the worst case scenario, this will help. I'd recommend trying everything else first though.
Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.
You can do a screen grab by using the grab utility located in the same directory Disk Utility is in.
This : With the external Disks attached and turned on.
Attachments
Now see if you can "repair disk". Also does it show up on the side in Finder? If so select "get info"
Nope I couldn't. The other hard drives have a sub menu to click on. This one doesn't. It reads that it's plugged in but there when I click on it, I can't click anything else
That hard drive still has stuff on it. It does sound like it just died though.
Which probably had nothing to do with OSX.
Can you do anything to it under disk utility? Do not try to format it. I'm quit sure theres still info on it.
Does it make any sounds ? Like clicking or whirring?
Which probably had nothing to do with OSX.
Can you do anything to it under disk utility? Do not try to format it. I'm quit sure theres still info on it.
Does it make any sounds ? Like clicking or whirring?
Yeah, right now it is not partitioned.
From the screen shot that the OP posted, all of the options under First Aid are greyed out.
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Hard-Drive-Problems-2113/External-WD-USB-Hdd.htm
Sounds like the external enclosure isn't working properly or the HD is froze.
Sounds like the external enclosure isn't working properly or the HD is froze.
Do you know if it was formatted as HFS? If it was, then run DiskWarrior. It saved my rear once when I corrupted my internal disk. Note that the bootable version doesn't start on the newest iMacs, but you don't need to use the bootable version. Just use the normal one. Also, it WILL NOT help you if the drive was FAT32 or NTFS.
Ya, they said the HD isn't readable because a partition is wrong. Weird. What do you all suggest now? Is there any way to get in there and get the data out?