Toshiba External Hard Drive not recognized by Macbook Pro

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Hi all,

So the last time I used this thing was about 8 months ago (I know, I haven't been keeping up with it) when my Macbook hard drive failed and I needed to put everything back on my computer. When I tried to do the automatic load from it, it kept crashing and wouldn't work. So I just manually transferred over most of my files from the external HD. Now, when I plugged it into the Mac it keeps coming up with a notification saying that it isn't recognized. It makes a humming noise and the light will turn on and off while it's doing that, but it won't show up on my desktop.

I went to disk utility and tried to verify/repair the disk, but it keeps coming up with the error "Invalid B-tree node size" and "Volume check failed" and can't do anything. I left it overnight to try and erase it because I don't need anything from it and thought that might help, but when I came back to it this morning I didn't see any notifications and noticed that the disk name changed from "disk1s2" to "disk2s2" and it still won't appear on my desktop.

I don't know what else to try and I'm not savvy enough to figure out what people are saying on forums about it. :'(

Does anyone have any ideas of what to do? I don't really understand what RAID and Restore mean on it or if those will help it. I don't care if everything is off the EHD, I just want it to work so I can back up my Macbook!

Help, please?
 
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Your Mac's Specs
2011 13" 10.8 (latest)
Plug in the external drive, and then ignore anything that pops up.

Go into disk utility, should be in your app tray area.

There you will see your main HDD and then your external HDD identified by its name.
BE SURE YOU CLICK ON YOUR EXTERNAL DRIVE (select it)

Then go to the partition tab at the top right(ish) and click one or however many partitions you want and then make sure (to the right of the size of the partitions) the format for the external HDD is Mac OS Journaled Extended!

Click apply (bottom right area) and then it will wipe the drive clean and format it for your Mac and create the partitions you wanted.

You will probably only want a single partition.

If your external drive is twice the size as your internal, I would make two partitions and then use one for time machine and then one for carbon copy cloner to have a bootable back up of your current set up. So if your HDD ever failed, you could use your computer form the external drive.

Let me know if you don't understand anything please
 
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Okay, I get that for the most part.

My HDD is 232.9 GB and my external is 465.8 GB - so I should do two partitions? If I convert it to two and decide later I want it to be one again, can I do that?
 
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Also, I just read on another forum that most users do not need to partition their drives, so I don't know if it's worth it for me to cut the external in half - sorry, I don't understand better!
 
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The partitions are completely you're choice. It depends on what you are going to be using the external drive for.

For example:
I have an external drive with 3 partitions, 1.25TB for TimeMachine, 250 for Carbon Copy Cloner, which clones my SSD and if anything were to go wrong, I would have an extra boot drive...and the 3rd partition is for free space. (but I am able to do this because my external is huge!)

It really is a handy tool to have and to use if you ever think your HDD is going to fail. Better safe than sorry.

Time Machine will not be a bootable backup but it will back up all of your important data, including apps and pictures, music, etc.
That is what a lot of users use.

You could just create one partition, with all the space, and format it as Mac OS Journaled Extended.

Then its free and you're ready to go!

If you use Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner, I would highly suggest starting as soon as possible and back up frequently. If you stay on top of your back ups then you won't lose any important data in the future.

But if there is no need to create a partition, then just don't do it...

The only difference b/t TM and CCC is you will be able to boot with CCC.

Does that clear anything up?

As soon as you format your external it will basically be good as new! Should work great.
 
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Yes, thank you.

Unfortunately, I started to do this around 10:30am this morning and 4 hours later it is still stuck "creating partition map" at the same percentage as when I started it. :/ I'm afraid this external is beyond fixing at this point...
 
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Hmm. That is frustrating.

Has the drive been abused (Dropped/banged) anything like that?

I had an external drive and it fell off my desk and could not work. I managed to get some data off of it and then it stopped completely.
Stored it in my closet, pulled it out, formatted it a couple times and it still works! Its a back up, back up drive lol.

Anyways, sorry to get sidetracked.

If the only thing that has happened to the drive has been data transfer, wiping the drive clean should solve the issue. Unless its just a faulty hard drive...

Try unplugging it, reconnecting it, open disk utility and then select the HDD and then just hit the erase button and have the format be Mac OS extended.

Doesn't matter if you unplug it now, it won't hurt it.

It shouldn't take hours to wipe the drive clean. Less than 15 minutes.

Tell me if you have any luck. I would just keep trying a few times.
 
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No, from what I remember I haven't dropped it ever or hit it on anything. Bah.

The HDD? Won't that erase stuff on my computer?

I'll keep trying to get this thing to work though.
 
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When I said select the HDD, I meant the External HDD!
 
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Plug in external drive.

Open Disk Utility.

*Select the external drive*

Click the "erase" tab
(format type= Mac OS extended)

Click "apply"

It will load and do its thing.
(should be a minute or two, not a few hours)
-----
You should have a Mac capable external drive!**
-----

Set up TimeMachine! And back up every day.
 
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Instead of clicking on partition, click on erase! Give that a try. And if it gets stuck, unplug it and then try again.
 
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Can you explain what happens?

It just gets stuck? Are you giving it enough time? Does it give you an error?
 
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picture1iw.png


This is what happens whenever I try to partition or erase the disk. It gets stuck at that same amount of progress.
 
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Ok
When you click on partition, select the single partition.
Then you need to go to options and select GUID partition scheme*

Then try applying it and see if it works.
 
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Ah!

Try plugging it in and deleting a folder on there if it lets you and then try again.

I'm
Not sure what to tell you...

Might be time for another external hard drive!
 
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Yeah, I can't delete anything from it because it won't show up - that was kind of the problem :p Well, thank you for all of your help.
 

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