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External Drive Unreadable

  • 28-05-2011 11:24PM
    #1
    deflemonkid
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 53 ✭✭


    About a month ago i had a 4Gb USB stick that became unreadable and was unable to re-format it on either mac of pc and actually had the product replaced as it was deemed faulty by the Kinston.

    Now i am having a similar problem with my external hard drive. It has be come unreadable by my flatmates windows machine and my mac will recognise it in the disk utility but wont mount it. Tried verifying and repairing permissions but it stops before finishing saying its unable to do it.

    My question is does anyone have any similar experience with drives failing to this extent and does anyone know of a way to maybe salvage at least some of the data on it before i try to format this drive

    Thanks


Comments

  • #2
    Sad Professor
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,699 CMod ✭✭✭✭Sad Professor


    USB sticks are cheap and sometimes become corrupted or fail. I don't really use them much anymore, but when I did, I went through loads of them.

    As for hard drives, they are just unreliable. It's the nature of the technology. Always assume they are going to fail at any minute and have a backup at the ready. I've learned this from bitter experience.

    What filesystem is the external drive formatted in? FAT32? If it's HFS+ then your flatmate's Windows machine wouldn't be able to read it anyway.

    Just to clarify, you have repaired the disk, yes, not just repaired permissions? People often get the two mixed up. Repairing permissions won't fix a drive that can't mount.


  • #3
    deflemonkid
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 53 ✭✭deflemonkid


    Sorry i had got mixed up, i tried to verify and repair the disk, the options for the permissions are grayed out so i didnt do anything to the permissions. so when i try to repair the drive in the disk utility it stops and gives a message that it cant finish and i should back up what i can before trying to format it.

    I'm pretty sure the disk is HTFS formatted, its windows compatible anyway, well it at least it was. an i've installed software that allows me to write to the disk from my mac.


  • #4
    deflemonkid
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 53 ✭✭deflemonkid


    Just looking at it here, it is FAT32, sorry, i'm having a dense day :P


  • #5
    Sad Professor
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 22,699 CMod ✭✭✭✭Sad Professor


    You could try using a utility such as DiskWarrior to see if you can repair the drive. It's not free though and there's no guarantee it will work.

    Is the drive able to spin up? Or is it struggling to do so? Have a close listen. When a hdd is dead or dying you can usually tell by the sound.


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