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Weird firewire drive behavior

L

livingfortoday

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Nov 17, 2004
2,903
4
The Msp
Hmm... I went to mount my external firewire drive tonight, and nothing happened when I turned it on. I mean, the drive spun up, but it didn't show on the desktop. I checked Disk Utility, and the attached picture is what I got.

Anyone know what's goin' on here? It seems to be ok, and the computer recognises it, it even says it's mounted, but it won't show up as mounted on the desktop, and the icon turns into that little white file one instead of a drive one in the Disk Utility window.
 

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Does it do the same thing every time you eject it and plug it back in? Was there anything on the drive to begin with? It looks like DU is reporting nothing is on the drive.
 
Heb1228 said:
Does it do the same thing every time you eject it and plug it back in? Was there anything on the drive to begin with? It looks like DU is reporting nothing is on the drive.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's doing it every time now. This afternoon it was fine, it just started doing this when I plugged it back in this evening. It has around 200GB of files on it right now, which I would very much like to not lose. I mean, it's mostly backed up, but it would be a huge pain to gather all the stuff up from the different places it's at.
 
Back in Disk Utility....

Try the get info button on both the full drive and then also on the "media" partition immediately under it in the left hand column. See if either of those report any data contained on the drive.

You may also want to try repairing the disk both from with the "media" partition highlighted (which looks like you just got finished doing in that screenshot) plus run it again with the full drive highlighted (279.5 GB Macpower) if it will let you.

If you get through all that and nothings showing up, I'd say its time to try out DiskWarrior or something to try and save your data.
 
Well, it's not finding any errors, though the "get info" is telling me there's no data written to the disk, and the S.M.A.R.T. status is "not supported". This is a brand new drive I just got two weeks ago - is it already screwed up? Am I actually gonna have to reformat this sucker?
 
livingfortoday said:
Well, it's not finding any errors, though the "get info" is telling me there's no data written to the disk, and the S.M.A.R.T. status is "not supported". This is a brand new drive I just got two weeks ago - is it already screwed up? Am I actually gonna have to reformat this sucker?
Click to expand...
SMART status isn't supported over any firewire drive afaik. But you may want to see of anybody else has any suggestions before you reformat, there may be something you can do that I'm not aware of. Where's mad jew with the troubleshooting?

If it lost your data like that, I'd return the thing and get another one.
 
The way it has performed so far, you should not trust this drive to backup your data. Where did you get the drive from?
 
Ok, wow, new info to report. I went ahead and plugged in my portable USB drive, and Disk Utility did the exact same thing as with the Firewire drive. I reformatted the USB one, and no change. Still won't mount on the desktop though it says it's mounted. I'm going to try to repair permissions and see if that's the problem. I'm starting to think my Firewire drive may be ok, just somethin' screwy with my system...
 
Good to hear... let us know if it works out. Try logging out and logging back in or restarting, and if that doesn't help, you may want to try creating a new user account.
 
Woo! I repaired permissions, and the firewire drive mounted right away! I have never had something like this happen before, it was so dang weird. Well, thanks for all your help, I'm glad my drive wasn't messed up. 200GB is a heckuva lotta files to move around!
 
livingfortoday said:
Woo! I repaired permissions, and the firewire drive mounted right away! I have never had something like this happen before, it was so dang weird. Well, thanks for all your help, I'm glad my drive wasn't messed up. 200GB is a heckuva lotta files to move around!
Click to expand...
Wow we need to bookmark this thread for those people that say repairing permissions never solves anything! :D
 
I think I've been visited by men in black while I was sleeping to have him imprinted on my brain. I can't stop thinking about him!
 
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