Scrambled data on multiple external disks

[plomomedia]

I'm new and here's my issue:

Multiple external disks (many of them new, and formatted for Mac) are mounting on the desktop, but with empty volumes. Volumes containing already recorded information are made invisible/inaccessible, even with Disk Utility. Data Recovery programs recognize raw data, but much of it comes back scrambled or unopenable. What is happening? Has this happened to someone else? Is it my computer, or is it the disks?

About the computer: 2009 Macbook Pro. I have two separate internal disks with two separate operating systems, one is OSX Leopard on a HDD, one with OSX Yosemite on a SSD. I boot from one or the other, depending on the software I want to use. the HDD is now having problems and suggests I back up my files and reformat ASAP. The SSD still works fine.

About the external drives: One is a G-technology 1tb drive, the others are WD 4TB drives. They've worked fine for a couple plug-and-plays, and then one day suddenly they will stop mounting the volumes to which I've saved information, showing new, empty volumes with greyed-out folders by the names [see pic].

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[DeltaMac]

Do the drives all work on a different Mac?

The 2009 MBPro would be one that can have a variety of issues caused by a faulty SATA ribbon cable. I'm not sure if that could affect external drives, but I think I remember reading about those kind of issues, too.

 

[plomomedia]

Do the drives all work on a different Mac?

The 2009 MBPro would be one that can have a variety of issues caused by a faulty SATA ribbon cable. I'm not sure if that could affect external drives, but I think I remember reading about those kind of issues, too.

Hi DeltaMac,
the disks, once "erased", "scrambled", or otherwise made inaccessible, do not perform differently on other macs.

 

[DeltaMac]

What happens if you try either of the two hard drives on another Mac, and run Disk Utility?
Select the partition on the drive, if that is available to you.
Does Disk Utility let you try First Aid on that partition? (An older system would give a choice for Repair Disk, later systems would simply run First Aid.)

 

[sylvie.petit]

Which data recovery software have you used? Is your drive a Fusion drive? It might be possible either the data recovery software you have used earlier was incompatible with the fusion drive, or you have overwritten the files on the drive. Due to overwriting, the files become scrambled or unopenable. I recommend you to test other software as well.