External HD issues Mac/Windows

[bessugo]

Hi everybody, Im writing today after two days trying to figure out where is the problem in this situation. Im asking for help as nothing so far has worked for me.

I do need to have access to a WD HD 1TB, but it wont show up on my Imac (neither the finder or utility disk or any recovery files software so far) I then found out that sometimes if you dont eject the drive from a windows OS this sort of thing might happen. I first check that the system wasn't trying to verify the HD before showing up in the finder but that didn't work either.

Then I tried to do it on a laptop with Windows. I went through my boxes and rescued an old laptop with Windows XP. Here comes the paradigma. It didnt show initially, but after installing MacDrive it does! But I cant have acces to it as its asking me to format it first. Non an option

Then I purchased Minitool Power Recovery. It actually detects the HD, and can manage to show results with videos, images, etc but then when I tried to rescued them, nothing the software stops responding.

At this stage Ive tried almost everything that you can find in this forum, so today Im asking for some alternatives... extremes or not


Thank you!

 

[Fishrrman]

Can you connect the drive to a PC, and get it to show up there?

 

[Audit13]

Is it possible the USB port on the drive is damaged?

Is the USB connector soldered to the hard drive's logic board?

 

[Longkeg]

Some more details may help us help you.... What is the history of the drive? How old is it? How is it formatted? You say you say the XP laptop requests you to format the drive. Is that because it’s formatted for MacOS or just unreadable? I’m not familiar with MacDrive. I assume it lets you mount non-native formatted drives on Windows machines. Why would it let you mount such a drive but not let you access files? Sorry to say but I think you may have a dying drive.

 

[bessugo]

Its a standard WD external HD, with a USB 3.0 cable (I tried several) using Minitool Power, but when I try to extract the files that I need the software collapses. No idea why.

The thing its that it shows the content of it, by

Can you connect the drive to a PC, and get it to show up there?

Its in my initial question

Is it possible the USB port on the drive is damaged?

Is the USB connector soldered to the hard drive's logic board?

No

Is it possible the USB port on the drive is damaged?

Is the USB connector soldered to the hard drive's logic board?

At this stage I dont think so, what I think its somehow corrupted, and my guess is that byusing a windows OS, somehow me or soeone extracted the HD wrongly, and this makes all computers to ignore it now.



My question now is, how can I possibly repair a HD by using windows XP? without formatting it of course, that I can do easily

Thanks for your replies

 

[Audit13]

If you had to load MacDrive in order for the Windows XP machine to recognize the drive, the drive must be formatted for use on a Mac rather than a Windows machine; therefore, I would not connect it to a Windows machine to fix the drive's file structure, index, table of contents, etc.

Windows is probably asking to format the drive because it is not formatted as Fat32, Fat16, NTFS, or exFat.

 

[davidmartindale]

Hi everybody, Im writing today after two days trying to figure out where is the problem in this situation. Im asking for help as nothing so far has worked for me.

I do need to have access to a WD HD 1TB, but it wont show up on my Imac (neither the finder or utility disk or any recovery files software so far) I then found out that sometimes if you dont eject the drive from a windows OS this sort of thing might happen. I first check that the system wasn't trying to verify the HD before showing up in the finder but that didn't work either.

Then I tried to do it on a laptop with Windows. I went through my boxes and rescued an old laptop with Windows XP. Here comes the paradigma. It didnt show initially, but after installing MacDrive it does! But I cant have acces to it as its asking me to format it first. Non an option

Then I purchased Minitool Power Recovery. It actually detects the HD, and can manage to show results with videos, images, etc but then when I tried to rescued them, nothing the software stops responding.

At this stage Ive tried almost everything that you can find in this forum, so today Im asking for some alternatives... extremes or not


Thank you!

Connect the drive to your Mac, open Terminal, run the command "diskutil list". Does the drive show in the list of reported volumes? If so check out this article (https://gist.github.com/bzerangue/dca8fc2d63309ba2bd9f).

 

[bessugo]

Hi everyone

If you had to load MacDrive in order for the Windows XP machine to recognize the drive, the drive must be formatted for use on a Mac rather than a Windows machine; therefore, I would not connect it to a Windows machine to fix the drive's file structure, index, table of contents, etc.

Windows is probably asking to format the drive because it is not formatted as Fat32, Fat16, NTFS, or exFat.

Im a mac user, so yes all external HD I use are prepared for Mac environment , thats why my most recent version of Windows available at home its XP...

Connect the drive to your Mac, open Terminal, run the command "diskutil list". Does the drive show in the list of reported volumes? If so check out this article (https://gist.github.com/bzerangue/dca8fc2d63309ba2bd9f).

Nope, it didnt work... somehow it seems that Mac its blocking someway mounting the HD because... who knows... but windows doesnt, and Im able to see the documents by using minitool power, so Im still have hope

 

[davidmartindale]

Hi everyone



Im a mac user, so yes all external HD I use are prepared for Mac environment , thats why my most recent version of Windows available at home its XP...





Nope, it didnt work... somehow it seems that Mac its blocking someway mounting the HD because... who knows... but windows doesnt, and Im able to see the documents by using minitool power, so Im still have hope

The odd thing is is that Terminal and Disk Utility will show unmountable drives, they just won't mount. You can connect a NTSF formatted drive for instance and diskutil list and Disk Utility will still show the drives

 

[hobowankenobi]

A good Mac HD utility might help.

But they are paid. Disk Warrior is the best. Stellar seems well liked, but never used it myself.

As noted, most PC tools will not help with a HFS formatted drive. They could actually make things worse.

Some of the recovery tools work on all formats, but to recover data, not repair drives. Disk Drill is easy to use, and works on all formats. If tools like Disk Drill can't see the drive to recover, you may need something like Disk Warrior to repair first.

If Disk Warrior can't see or repair the drive....not much else to be done with software.

 

[Fishrrman]

If the drive is in Mac format, DON'T try to "fix it on a PC".
It will probably make things worse.

When you plug the drive into the Mac, can you hear the platters "spin up" inside?
Even if the drive won't mount on the desktop?

Something to try.
No promises -- just try it. Sometimes this works when USB disk drivers get corrupted.

Do this:
1. Power down, all the way off
2. DISCONNECT the WD drive
3. Boot up the Mac, get to the finder
4. RE-CONNECT the WD drive
5. Now.... just wait.
6. If the drive doesn't show up... just keep waiting.

Give it about 30 minutes.
Sometimes the finder will try to "repair" a drive that is giving problems when mounting.
But it can take a little time.
Again, no promises that this will change anything.

Even if you hear the platters spin up, there could be other "hardware failures" inside.
The "arm" containing the drive heads may be malfunctioning.

Just wondering -- how old is the drive?

 

[bessugo]

If the drive is in Mac format, DON'T try to "fix it on a PC".
It will probably make things worse.

When you plug the drive into the Mac, can you hear the platters "spin up" inside?
Even if the drive won't mount on the desktop?

Something to try.
No promises -- just try it. Sometimes this works when USB disk drivers get corrupted.

Do this:
1. Power down, all the way off
2. DISCONNECT the WD drive
3. Boot up the Mac, get to the finder
4. RE-CONNECT the WD drive
5. Now.... just wait.
6. If the drive doesn't show up... just keep waiting.

Give it about 30 minutes.
Sometimes the finder will try to "repair" a drive that is giving problems when mounting.
But it can take a little time.
Again, no promises that this will change anything.

Even if you hear the platters spin up, there could be other "hardware failures" inside.
The "arm" containing the drive heads may be malfunctioning.

Just wondering -- how old is the drive?

hello friends, oddly enough windows have proven to be more functional in this case. Windows XP was able to recognise the drive when 2 mac devices didnt. Im at the moment using an application called Recoverit that its allowing me to transfer all the data from the HD to a another one. After this, Im afraid the only option for the first one its to be formatted and then Im very confident it will be functional again.

It is a bit odd that this issue its still today so hard of understand and to fix. Hundreds of theories around the internet and techniques, when Im afraid the hard truth its that when not been able to use external hard drives in multiple systems (without some software in between) goes agains all of us the users.

Im afraid in this particular case my mac was completely lost in order about what to do with this HD. Not showing it its already a bad sign, when the HD has proven to be perfectly functional. The only issue here (and this is me guessing) its that someone (and this is probably me) ejected the HD on a mac or windows system unsafely, locking a door that mac was incapble to find the key for, but windows (altho not capable of opening the content in it) at least could show it in order to extract the information in a safely way.

All data its been now rescued, thanks to the software Recoverit. All the tricks and techniques have proven to be a waste of time when the real issue here its companies that in order to make more money invest in make their accessibility exclusive for their own users, putting in risk (in this particular case) a perfectly functional HD. Altho Im probably wrong, Ive spend two weeks researching and trying to find a solution here.

Thanks to all of you

 

[hobowankenobi]

Glad you got it.

The most likely cause was simply the differences of file systems (each has is its own strength and weakness). The recovery software is the hero here, not the OS. Good recovery software can see and recover from many different file systems.

It is possible that unpluggin a drive while in use could have caused the issue, but other things can cause this too, including simply different less-than-compatible USB chipsets, hard drive firmware/models, and any host of issues that can damage or corrupt the directory on a HFS+ volume.

And lastly, though you recovered the data (the most important thing!), nothing got "fixed". Most of the chat here was about how to fix the possible directory structure to mount the volume, and not have to format it. Most specialty recovery software (any platform) is not fixing the volume/directory....unless it is a repair tool like Disk Warrior.

If you want to be fully cross platform, consider formatting exFAT, but keep in mind that it is typically less reliable overall....which is why each platform has its own preferred format for maximum stability.