external hard drive not showing up in finder - help!

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Need some guidance...

My WD external hard drive is not mounting in finder/on the desktop, but it does show up in Disk Utility. I tried repairing it in disk utility, and it says the disk cannot be repaired, and to backup what's on it and erase the disk. The drive seems to be working, but it must have gotten disconnected improperly.

Is there a way to back up what's on this hard drive if I can't actually get into it through finder?
 

chscag

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It's hard to say what's wrong with the drive but if Disk Utility says the drive can not be repaired, it means that it can not access the drive. That's not a good sign because even recovery software has to access the drive first before it can recover any data.

If the WD is no longer in warranty, you may be able to remove the drive from the WD case and mount it in an external USB carrier. Sometimes that will work if it's the drive interface electronics that have failed rather than the mechanical workings of the drive itself.
 
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Oh no...

So software like Disk Warrior and things like that won't actually help if Disk Utility is saying it's unable to repair the disk?

If the enclosure doesn't end up being the problem, what options are left for recovering the things on the hard drive? I had been hoping it would be a good sign that Disk Utility atleast shows the drive..
:(
 

chscag

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You can certainly try Disk Warrior if you wish. The reason I didn't recommend it is because it's expensive and may not be able to access the drive. If they have a trial version, download that first.

Other choices? There are none except to pay for expensive data recovery. However, I would try the external carrier if Disk Warrior doesn't work as that would be an inexpensive solution.
 
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Gotcha, thanks so much for your advice. One more question for you, if I may..

I ran a trial version of Ease US Data Recovery Wizard on the external hard drive, and it is detecting files on the drive - is that a good sign, or is that neither here nor there? Just wondering if that gives any indication of the software successfully accessing the drive

Thanks again
 
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THere will be files on that drive, but most likely the formatting informations has got corrupted, Try the trial version of Disk Warrior to see if it can repair the disk or rescue any content before shelling out money
 

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