Help!!! External HDD

Iomega Man

Hi all,

I'm in big trouble with my Firewire external HDD.
Its a WD My Studio,500GB.

Problem is that, as of yesterday it won't mount.
Go into Disk utility and its grayed out.

Problem just happened out of the blue.

All help appreciated,

Thanks,


IM

Sad Professor

What happens when you right-click on it in Disk Utility and select mount?

Does reconnecting the cable do anything? Maybe try connecting via USB.

Is the drive still spinning up, making noises, etc?

Iomega Man

Hi SP,

All the usual sounds/lights etc.
Tried USB,no go.
When I right click on drive to mount it,it tells me that it can't be mounted and to run first aid.
If I try first aid, I get the following error message-"invalid sibling link,volume check failed,ERROR,filesystem verify or repair failed".

Sad Professor

That's not good. It sounds like the drive may have some bad blocks. Afaik Disk Utility isn't too good at fixing these type of problems, at least not without erasing the entire drive. Do you have a backup?

DiskWarrior might be able to do it without erasing the data though.

kevteljeur

Disk Warrior rocks. There aren't many utilities that get to the point as well as this. But it could be a hardware related problem, which wouldn't be good. I still have a pocket drive with some stuff on it (all duplicated) which I'd still like to revive but I just don't know enough about drive hardware problems to do it...

Iomega Man

Just ran one of those data recovery programs(Data Rescue II).
I can see all my stuff but to get it is gonna cost me $99...!!!

Anyone recommend any of these programs,are they worth it?

How about running a Linux Live CD (Ubuntu) as an example.

Download Ubuntu > Burn ISO > Place in Drive > Restart Press C >

Then copy files over.

Only a suggestion.

Iomega Man

Hi NoDrama,

Think I'll give that a try

kevteljeur

Iomega Man wrote: »

Just ran one of those data recovery programs(Data Rescue II).
I can see all my stuff but to get it is gonna cost me $99...!!!

Anyone recommend any of these programs,are they worth it?

I've found Data Rescue to be good. It's a bit fiddly and you might have to muck about with the advanced settings if the basic ones get no results, but that's to be expected if it's any good.

The question is, is getting the data back worth that money to you? It was for me, and better value than the thousands that a drive recovery shop were looking for to recover data. Get that and Disk Warrior, and run Disk Warrior on your drives once every month or two.

Iomega Man

Think I'll get DR II if all else fails.
Have a heap of stuff on it but its really only photos that I'm worried about.
$99 would be worth that.

Sad Professor

Always backup all your data. Storage is so cheap and Time Machine is so easy to use there's really no excuse. You can get a 1TB external for about 100 euro.