USB backup drive won't mount

I have an iomega 1TB backup drive that I use for my time machine and some other backup files. Just a couple days ago all of a sudden the drive stopped mounting. The enclosure powers on (lights up on front), the drive boots up as I can hear it spin up and run. But the drive will not mount on my Mac Mini Thunderbolt.

I have removed the drive from the enclosure and tried it in a PC and tried using drive recovery software that supports recovering hfs+ and it does not show the drive even in windows drive management and will not mount in windows either.

I have tried finding the drive on the mac with drive utility and it's not there either.

I just want to recover the files off it (not even the time machine backup) as they are important business files.

Any help is appreciated, thank you in advance.

Mac OS X 10.7.2
2.3Ghz
8GB 1333 DDR3
500GB HDD (Internal)
iomega 1TB USB

It sounds like the drive may have failed. If it won't mount and can't be seen either from your Mac or a PC, I doubt data recovery software would be of any value. Professional data recovery is very expensive and may be the only way to recover your data.

chscag said:

It sounds like the drive may have failed. If it won't mount and can't be seen either from your Mac or a PC, I doubt data recovery software would be of any value. Professional data recovery is very expensive and may be the only way to recover your data.

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Well I am a PC Tech who works on PC's all the time, I have been using Mac's since 1999 but never really had the pleasure of repairing one since they last soooooo long (hence my first mac g4 400mhz still running from 1999 with no issues ever), but with PC's I can usually run GetDataBack NTFS and it recovers files for customers even if the drive cannot be seen, accessed or showing in disk management, so I didn't know if there was a way or some software for mac's that would do the same. I have tried all the trials for some that I can find and none show the drive either.

The other option I thought about trying is Linux, as a web hosting server owner/admin I do know that Linux will show just about any drive no matter what is wrong with it LOL.

Thanks!!!

If disk utility isn't showing the drive, I believe it'll be unlikely that a linux build will mount it either. Sounds to me like the drive's got power, but no comms. Got another external chassis to plunk it into? It may just be the USB interface.

No USB drives will appear on the desktop - thumb or HD

None of my thumb drives or USB hard drives appear on my Lion desktop. I've set things so that they should appear but they do not.

The only way I can access a USB drive is to launch Disk Utility, select the volume and select open, or to open it via a sidebar. The icons simply will not mount on my desktop. No problem with any of my onboard hard drives

I've addressed all possible preferences. I've been doing corporate IT for years and am stumped by this one. Judging by Google search results, this is a common problem.

Unless anyone has any other suggestions, I'm reverting to Snow Leopard.

So for sure you have opened Finder's Preferences and have all these checked?