External drives not loading

I have two Iomega external drives that are used for only backing-up files and are
not in daily use.

Today, neither of them will load on to my desktop. As it is both, I assume the
drives are not faulty as that would be too much a coincidence, but not impossible
I suppose. The power and USB leads are the same ones I always use and are left
connected to my iMac. My two flashdrives do load.

Any idea as to what the problem is?

Thanks

If they aren't showing up in the sidebar in Finder, then run Disk Utility to see if it is recognizing that the drives are even connected. If DU doesn't see the drives, then my best guess is that the USB cable is faulty. I assume you can see that the drives are getting power by an activity light and/or sounds of the drive spinning?

Thanks for the reply.

The drives don't show in Finder or Disk Utility and I have another USB lead which I tried without success. The light on the drives comes on and I can hear the drives spinning.

Anything else you can think of?

Thanks

Skanga said:

Thanks for the reply.

The drives don't show in Finder or Disk Utility and I have another USB lead which I tried without success. The light on the drives comes on and I can hear the drives spinning.

Anything else you can think of?

Click to expand...

It's one of 4 things: a loss of the USB driver; the USB port; the cable; or the drives themselves (perhaps the port on the drives). Since your flash drives work in the USB port (I assume you've tried all the ports?), that leaves just the cable and the drives.

Double check the power adapter to those drives also to be sure you are using the correct one. If it's the wrong one, they may not be getting enough power.

time to take your drives and mac to apple store, test it out.