AboutJeff Greenberg Expertise I can comfortably answer most basic/advanced questions regarding Macintosh hardware and software - nowadays only OSX (I gave up OS 9 seven years ago). My particular specialties are in Video editing/DVD authoring. I am a certified trainer in the "pro apps" (Final Cut, DVDSP, Soundtrack, Motion). I have been using Macs since 1985.
Please do not ask me about OS9.
Experience I'm an Apple Cert. Trainer for FCP, DVD SP, since the inception of this program. I've was
certified as an Apple Cert. Technician back in 1989.
Publications Videography
Education/Credentials BA film- Penn State. Certifications from Apple, Avid for training.
Expert: Jeff Greenberg Date: 6/12/2008 Subject: drive not mounting
Question Hello Jeff,
I have a Hard drive (seagate 250 GB) that seems to have become unmounted. It happened I think when I was installing a new HD on the same bus, and when cables were reconnected this Seagate, which had been running fine for some time was not on the desktop. I removed it and placed it in an enclosure - the jumper was reset to CS. On startup, I get a dialog box saying that the computer is unable to read the volume and I have 3 choices - initialize, ignore or eject. I choose ignore. I am then able to see the drive only in the Disk Utility list identified by its model No., and it can not be verified or repaired. There is some data on the drive I'd like to keep for reference, and I found that the software, DATA RESCUE II (demo) was able to scan the drive and identify all the files. I would rather avoid spending the $100 for this program and would like to try remounting the disk in some way - possibly by command line in the Terminal. I have an Apple KTech article that outlines the procedure, but when I tried it, I found the drive was listed but not named. Proceeding with mounting attempt, I encountered a warning notice that data may be lost. Are you at all familiar with this? Can you advise on mounting via the Terminal or any other way? I tried to make a disk image to transfer to another drive (empty) of equal size, but a dialog box said the file size was too large. (If anything, the source disk was not entirely filled up, so it should be somewhat smaller.
Your advice greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Keith
Answer Keith,
I'm not sure that the drive is okay. You indicate that the drive 'became unmounted' while inside your machine. Maybe it was a cable.
Maybe the drive was going bad and wasn't mounting on the desktop.
Since it's saying that you need to format the drive, it point to the possibility that the drive table/partition is corrupted. The fact that the drive is listed but not named seems to point in that direciton.
Data rescue (or TechTool or any of the other OSX recovery programs) won't fix this sort of problem, and in fact, you *need* to have one, if you want any chance of getting the data back (if this is truly the problem), we need to figure out if the problem is that.
The only way I can think of to find that out...is to put the drive back in your mac. If it mounts, then it was some other problem (jumper, etc.). But if it shows the same problem the drive is going bad (or corrupted.)
Many of them have a trial version. Test it first. Some software works where others dont. I've used Data Rescue a couple of times - it works, but not every time. If you discover it works, then pay for it. You'll need another drive to recover the data to.
