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WD HDD Won't Recognize

HelixOmnimedia

HelixOmnimedia

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 26, 2006
791
34
Traveling The World
Hey

Plugged my Wester Digital 500GB external hard drive in last night and it wasn't recognized. I felt it as it was late, and tried again moments ago, and this drive just isn't showing up.

I've tried it on a Windows computer too and the same thing happened.

Please don't tell me I've lost all my movies, music and tv shows! It was over 400GB of stuff.

HELP!
 
If it was formatted for Mac, the Windows box you tested on shouldn't recognize it.

You'll need to find another Mac to test on. If that doesn't work I'd try removing the drive from its enclosure and seeeing if a different enclosure would work.
 
1. Does the drive show up in Disk Utility?

2. Is the drive unusually hot and/or making weird clicking noises?

If the drive show up in Disk Utility but not on your desktop then your directory structure may be broken on the drive and you may have to use a program called "Data Rescue II" to rescue your data.

If you hear Clicking noises or it is unusually hot then there is a chance that the drive may be dead making it impossible to retrieve data unless you want to pay $2000 in data recovery.
 
miles01110 said:
Does another computer recognize it?
Click to expand...

No the windows computer didn't recognize it either.

Darth.Titan said:
You'll need to find another Mac to test on. If that doesn't work I'd try removing the drive from its enclosure and seeeing if a different enclosure would work.
Click to expand...

Hahaha no one in this town know what an Apple is other than the fruit, and other other option sounds too complicated.

Archon Gold said:
1. Does the drive show up in Disk Utility?

2. Is the drive unusually hot and/or making weird clicking noises?

If the drive show up in Disk Utility but not on your desktop then your directory structure may be broken on the drive and you may have to use a program called "Data Rescue II" to rescue your data.

If you hear Clicking noises or it is unusually hot then there is a chance that the drive may be dead making it impossible to retrieve data unless you want to pay $2000 in data recovery.
Click to expand...

1. Yes the drive shows up in Disc Utility.
2. No doesn't run hot, not usually in long enough to get hot, and there's not weird clicking noises either.

I'll give that Data Rescue II a google search to see what comes up.
 
you're having the EXACT same problem that my External WD MyBook 600Gb had.

I left it on attached to my network as a NAS but then the power went out and the WD crashed.

The only thing that I was able to do was to connect it to my mac mini and use data rescue then format the drive.

note that Data Rescue II is software that you have to buy sadly and I can't find any other alternatives to that program that are free.
 
I got the same problem with my previous 5 ext HDDs.
Funny thing is the drives are okay, only the enclosure was f***ed up.
I went to buy another enclosure for it and the drive showed up again in my monitor.
That's why I never use ext HDD again for anything except for occasional off-site backup.
 
Don't buy "external" drives. The enclosures are always crap and rarely a failure is caused by a bad drive.
I always buy "internal" drives and place them in enclosures of my choice.
 
Ok


Data Rescue says its going to take about 5,000+ hours to do 'whatever' it does. :(
So I've looked and over the last time since I posted have the majority of the files backed up on Disc, but having the external harddrive is much easier.


I got to Disc Utility, where its appearing, and click the ERAISE > Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and then click ERASE.

I got message:

Disc Erase failed with error: Resource Busy


Any help would be appreciated.
 
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