Lost connection to external drive during Time Machine back and now can't access drive

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Lost connection to external drive during Time Machine backup and now can't access the drive. I plugged it back in but the drive will not show up on my desktop. I tried disk first aid and the drive shows up but all the buttons are grayed out. Any ideas to fix the problem so I can at least back up the into to another drive? The drive gave me no problems at all until it lost connection during the Time Machine backup.

Thanks for any help.
Clif
 

chscag

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It sounds like the drive may have failed during the Time Machine backup. It's not unusual for drives to suddenly fail. You can try using Disk Warrior to repair the drive but since it's a costly application to buy ($99), I'm not sure it's worth it.

I would just buy another drive and use the new one for Time Machine backups. The backups on the defective drive will probably be lost in that case, but unless you're willing to spend money to salvage the data.....
 

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