The disk you inserted is not readable by this computer

[elderchunti]

Please! Need help, a lot of information is on this hard drive, mostly videos I filmed and stills. It's a
Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex External Hard Drive, over a year old, used it over the weekend, connected it last night, I got that message, it won't appear on the Finder. What can I do so my mac reads the hard drive again and show my files? I don't want to do anything yet because I'm afraid I'll erase any data on my hard drive.

 

[pastrychef]

Try launching Disk Utility and repairing disk.

 

[elderchunti]

here's a screenshot of what I see on Disk Utility. All the buttons for the most part are grayed out.

 

[pastrychef]

The only other thing I can think of to try is running Disk Warrior. It is a commercial app but well worth the money. It has saved me many times.

 

[elderchunti]

tried diskwarrior, my external hard drive doesn't appear on there.

 

[pastrychef]

So, Disk Utility sees it, but repair disk is grayed out and Disk Warrior doesn't see the drive at all... I'm at a loss.

 

[wordsworth]

Try reading this thread. It may be useful.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4480666?start=0&tstart=0

Good luck.

 

[elderchunti]

read that thread, for some diskwarrior worked, but my external hard drive doesn't seem to appear on the popup menu, just my mac's hard drive. again, it does appear on the disk utility, but it's not giving me the option to repair as you can see on the screenshot above.

 

[wordsworth]

Have you tried the Seagate support forum?

<http://forums.seagate.com/t5/GoFlex-GoFlex-Desk-GoFlex-Pro/bd-p/UPHD_and_PU>

 

[elderchunti]

seagate forum didn't help. if i use disk utility, then erase, and under erase options, don't erase, would that work, or would that just erase everything. what exactly happens?

 

[Fishrrman]

"seagate forum didn't help. if i use disk utility, then erase, and under erase options, don't erase, would that work, or would that just erase everything. what exactly happens?"

Once you've "erased", you replace the old disk directory with a new one that will show "empty" -- that is, your files will be gone.

Actually, the files may still be "out there" on the sectors (platters) of the drive. But you won't be able to "get at" them without data recovery software (such as DataRescue3).

So -- don't "erase" unless you understand what you are doing!