my external hard drive no longer mounts on the desktop and is not visible in disk utility - what do i do?

Question

a while back, my hard drive stopped mounting on the desktop. no computer would recognize it. but it would be visible in Disk Utility. yesterday, i installed Data Rescue 3 hoping it would be able to recover my files, but it will not recognize the hard drive. it is no longer visible in Disk Utility. what do i do in this situation? has the drive deteriorated beyond recovery? please don't tell me that. i had to save up the money to buy a new hard drive and this expensive software. please don't tell me in the time it took me to do that the drive has broken beyond repair? what are my options at this point? i'm looking for things i can do myself before having to take it to a specialist. they are ridiculously expensive and can't guarantee that they will recover my important files. any recommendations?

Answer 1

Plug it into another computer to see if it runs. Be mindful that the HD (Hard Drive) that is in the External device is most likely the same thing as the you would find in any desktop. All it is is an adapter from either PATA or SATA to USB. Most likely the adapter failed if no computer can recognize the HD. You can simply remove the case, in most instances, and mount it in that or another computer.

Answer 2

You should try to remember that we don't know what you have. What is the Mac OS version? What is the Windows version? exFAT is wrong!!! Microsoft explains very clearly that any and all FAT formats are for tiny drive volumes ONLY. That's why a Windows formatting app will always cut the drive into several 32 GB partitions. The cluster size grows rapidly with volume size making it very inefficient. I'm not saying exFAT is the reason you can't use the drive now. Just saying DON'T USE exFAT with any large drive volume. "I've tried uninstalling the driver but no go" Neither Windows nor Mac OS needs you to have installed any driver, so no need to try to uninstall a driver. The best thing to do.... -- Connect it to the Mac. -- Open Disk Utility. -- Select the drive model at left. If no drive shown, the connection is bad or the hardware (cable / drive) is bad. -- Select the "Erase" tab. -- Change the format to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". -- Click "Erase". The next best thing to do.... -- Connect the drive to a Windows system. Right-click the Start menu and choose "Properties". Click the "Customize" button, and put a check for "Display Administrative Tools". Next, Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > Computer Management -- On the left, under "Storage", select "Disk Management". -- Click on the drive to select it. -- Remove the partition, link below explains how. -- Add a new partition, link below explains how. -- Under the "Action" menu, select "All tasks" > Format. Choose NTFS. For Mac format, use the Seagate software below... Download the HFS4WIN.exe file at the link below. Connect the drive you want to use to the Windows system. Double-click the HFS4WIN.exe file and install. When it finishes, restart. Each drive you want to use with Windows requires a new installation of the HFS4WIN.exe software. For NTFS format, buy "Paragon NTFS For Mac".

Answer 3

Firts of all try another USB cable. Cable must be shielded. Then is you connect your drive to frot usb port, try to connect it to back USB bort (which is located directly on mother board, if you've got laoptop it dosen't mattaer which port to connect). If it dosen't help, and drive isnt still visible. Then click my computer wtih right button select Manage Computer and on new open window go to disk manager and locate you external drive (it's usually 3-4th in order, detect it by size). If it presents if any drive letter is associated with it if not right click and select assign Drive letter. If disk is not present in Disk Manager you'd better try to connect it to another computer and do above opeartions. May be there it will be detected and mounted. If after all drive is mounted and system says that partition or drive is corrupter or unformated then you can find in Internet any free unerase utility and try to restore data with it.

And for future I can recommend you free Internet storage for senciive data backup:

skydive.live.com - 25Gig of storage for free. If your data if private and you afraid that it can be stolen. Then by something like PGP + Alladin token and encript all files before uploading to Skydrive. It will be cheaper and less headache with keeping your data in quick access.

Answer 4

if ur connecting with usb try another cable.