hdd problems

I have an external WD 500gig HDD that just stopped mounting. It shows up in the system profiler and in disk utility. However in DU it wont allow me to do first aid or any other options as they are grayed out.

My friend, I got the same problem 2 days ago. I think that the only solution is to format your hdd again. that is what I did. My usb hdd was showing up in disk utility but not on the desktop nor in finder. I don't know if it is related to the 10.5.6 update but I think the best way is to reformat.
Hope this help

cbob1981 said:

I have an external WD 500gig HDD that just stopped mounting. It shows up in the system profiler and in disk utility. However in DU it wont allow me to do first aid or any other options as they are grayed out.

Click to expand...

If the Disk Utility options are grayed out, the drive may be defective. Since Western Digital warrants their drives for 5 years, yours may still be under warranty. Usually when contacting WD support for a RMA, they will ask you to run their Drive Diagnostics program first and what the results were.

The WD diagnostics can be downloaded and burned to a CD. Here's their support web page where you can download software.

WD - Service & Support Home

Regards.

It is possible the drive is physically okay, but something with the data headers is corrupted. You could try getting a program like Disk Rescue or DiskWarrior. They are generally very good at rebuilding your drive data and restoring it if nothing is physically wrong with the disk. It's a somewhat common problem.