Secondary HD not recognized

[danakm]

I installed a secondary HDD on my mid-2009 MBP optibay several months ago and everything was working fine and dandy so far, until an hour ago when I restarted my MBP and it didn't show me this disk anymore.

I have yet to open the computer (working atm) to try and check stuff, but I wanted to ask if you guys might have any ideas ad to what it causing it/things to try to fix it?

Disk Utility "sees" it and shows it as unmounted, and Finder doesn't even know it's there :/

 

[treekram]

Have you tried to mount it in Disk Utility? Does the mount point - the name it should have in Finder - appear below the disk name in Disk Utility? Can you and have you run First Aid on the disk in Disk Utility? You can also take a look at /var/log.system.log and see if there's any clue to what's happening.

What OS are you running - the Disk Utility UI changed significantly in El Capitan.

I've never had an internal HDD mount failure of a good disk, but I suppose it can happen, especially with older computers. So it maybe just a one-time thing.

 

[danakm]

Have you tried to mount it in Disk Utility? Does the mount point - the name it should have in Finder - appear below the disk name in Disk Utility? Can you and have you run First Aid on the disk in Disk Utility? You can also take a look at /var/log.system.log and see if there's any clue to what's happening.

What OS are you running - the Disk Utility UI changed significantly in El Capitan.

I've never had an internal HDD mount failure of a good disk, but I suppose it can happen, especially with older computers. So it maybe just a one-time thing.

I tried clicking on the "mount" option, but nothing happens. The name of the disk appears greyed out. I tried running First Aid a few minutes ago and it cancels it ("fails") after a minute or so.

I'm running El Capitan 10.11.3

Maybe it died suddenly? But if that were the case would Disk Utility still be able to "see" it?

 

[treekram]

The disk is probably bad. Because it's the secondary disk I think that Disk Utility would have tried to run the fsck command on the drive. You can try that by going to Terminal and entering the following:

sudo fsck_hfs -fy /dev/[Device name] where [Device name] is what appears on the last line on the right "Device:" It should be something like disk1s2. (Make sure you have "BOE" selected when looking for the "Device:" name.)

I'm pretty sure that the drive information is not stored on the platter itself so that's why it can see "TOSHIBA MK505...". As for "BOE", that information is contained on the HDD but also in the list drives that the system keeps and will try to mount on starting up. So even if the drive is completely dead, "BOE" may still show up for an internal drive.

 

[danakm]

The disk is probably bad. Because it's the secondary disk I think that Disk Utility would have tried to run the fsck command on the drive. You can try that by going to Terminal and entering the following:

sudo fsck_hfs -fy /dev/[Device name] where [Device name] is what appears on the last line on the right "Device:" It should be something like disk1s2. (Make sure you have "BOE" selected when looking for the "Device:" name.)

I'm pretty sure that the drive information is not stored on the platter itself so that's why it can see "TOSHIBA MK505...". As for "BOE", that information is contained on the HDD but also in the list drives that the system keeps and will try to mount on starting up. So even if the drive is completely dead, "BOE" may still show up for an internal drive.

This is all I get when I run that command on terminal:

 

[JTToft]

Format and/or delete partitions and see what you get.

 

[treekram]

You can see if the disk will mount in Disk Utility. If it does, quickly copy the data you need off the drive. I suspect it won't mount. What you do after that will depend on whether you have a backup of the data on the drive. If you have a backup, I wouldn't trust the drive and I would just replace it. If you don't have a backup, you can try the disk in an external enclosure or docking station or try getting software like Disk Warrior. I've haven't used it so I can't speak to it's effectiveness.

 

[danakm]

You can see if the disk will mount in Disk Utility. If it does, quickly copy the data you need off the drive. I suspect it won't mount. What you do after that will depend on whether you have a backup of the data on the drive. If you have a backup, I wouldn't trust the drive and I would just replace it. If you don't have a backup, you can try the disk in an external enclosure or docking station or try getting software like Disk Warrior. I've haven't used it so I can't speak to it's effectiveness.

It doesn't mount. I click and nothing happens (mentioned before), so I think it might have died completely.

I have most of my data backed up, but I will lose a few files since I last backed up about a month ago (I had scheduled a back up for this weekend haha). I will try Disk Warrior (thanks for the suggestion) to see if I can save the newest files and see what happens. But thankfully, almost everything has an extra copy on my external HD.