[SOLVED] - Cannot format or repair external HDD

[RayBir]

Hi, two days ago, i noticed my external HDD wasn't reacting correctly.
Every folder i opened was either empty?? - Or just didn't open at all.
Realizing i had now lost 1TB of music and photos of family etc - i tried to re-format the HDD.
(Luckily i have most important family galleries on 2 different "Clouds") - however all my music is lost.

When i try to "Format" or "Repair" with the Disc Utility, i get this message:

Running First Aid on “****” (disk5s2)
Repairing file system.
Volume could not be unmounted.
Restoring the original state found as mounted.
Unable to unmount volume for repair. : (-69673)

Operation failed…

Is my external HDD forever lost - destined for the trash?
Any ideas please. My music is probably lost forever, but i thought i could at least claim back my HDD?

 

[Fishrrman]

"Realizing i had now lost 1TB of music and photos of family etc - i tried to re-format the HDD."

The worst thing you could do would be to "reformat" it blindly.
Perhaps you're lucky that you've been unsuccessful in doing this so far.

This is what BACKUPS are for.
You always always ALWAYS want at least TWO copies of precious stuff. THREE copies is better.

Is this an older drive? They do "go bad".
Is the drive platter-based?
When you put your ear to it, can you hear the platter spinning?
Can you hear anything else?

Try this:
a. DISCONNECT the drive.
b. REBOOT the Mac
c. Get to the finder.
d. Now, REconnect the drive, then...
e. Just "let it sit" a while.

If the finder can't mount it, it may try to run some repair routines on it, and then try a re-mount. Give it about 30 minutes.

It could be a corrupted directory or disk drivers gone bad.
Or... it could be an actual hardware failure.

I know a "trick" that can resurrect mp3 files (and perhaps jpegs and movie files as well), but it's not for the feint-of-heart.

 

[RayBir]

Well, looks like it is an actual Hardware failure 😢
I did as you said, but now the HDD is totally dead. Nothing is showing up on the "Finder" menue. It did start to spin, but then just died out on me.
It was an "WD Elements 1TB HDD" quite old, few years in fact.
Not even showing up in the Disc Utilities now either.

I do have backups of all my Family Albums etc, but obviously not the music files. I had about 800GB of good music, but not the cash to "buy" iCloud space for that amount.

Thanks for your help and commitment - i appreciate it very much.

Lets consider this [SOLVED].