External hard drive not recognized

I'm trying to use a Macbook pro hard drive as an external. I have it now in a SATA 2.5" enclosure, and I am trying to access the files on it. I have tried the drive on multiple computers and it never seems to mount properly. It appears in disc utility, but when I try to mount it I get a Verify volume failed: Unrecognized Filesystem Error. The repair tools are also grayed out in disk utility. Is there any way to access these files?

thanks

It could be that your enclosure is malfunctioning. Have you tried a known working drive in it?

I've seen this problem when an enclosure needs a power source because the power supplied by USB isn't enough.

I don't use enclosures because of the various problems that are associated with them. I use one of these. Well worth the price and since it's from OWC, it's good quality.

chscag said:

I don't use enclosures because of the various problems that are associated with them. I use one of these. Well worth the price and since it's from OWC, it's good quality.

Click to expand...

Outstanding device. I don't know how I got along without it. Highly recommended.

Thanks for the responses. I think the problem actually be that it's a hard drive from a machine running lion, and I'm trying to mount it on a macbook running snow leopard. I'm assuming there's some kind of compatibility issue there. Is there any way to get around this? Or do I just need to find a machine running Lion?

If the drive was formatted for OSX, even an earlier version, you should be able to see it on your Mac.

Unfortunately you have done what so many people do - or rather don't do. You have not kept your precious files backed up on a second drive. Never, ever save your data on just one hard drive because it can fail at any time.
With any luck, the only part that has failed is the SATA/USB Bridge Chip inside the enclosure (it's a small PCB). If you can extract the hard drive from the enclosure and remove the bridge chip, you may be able to fit it inside a third-party enclosure and plug that into your PC

cas3704 said:

Thanks for the responses. I think the problem actually be that it's a hard drive from a machine running lion, and I'm trying to mount it on a macbook running snow leopard. I'm assuming there's some kind of compatibility issue there. Is there any way to get around this? Or do I just need to find a machine running Lion?

Click to expand...

Booting the drive could be an issue.

Just mounting the drive from within 10.6 would not be. It is not a "compatibility" issue. Both versions of OS X read and write to the same format.

Either the drive or the enclosure is not working.

Thanks for your help ferrarr. Holding down option and selecting the external as the startup worked perfectly. Although, I'm still unclear why I could never read the drive normally on the PowerMac (running 10.6) that I plugged it into. Disk Utility would always give me a unrecognized filesystem error.

Sorry not a PowerMac, a Mac Pro 4,1. On both the Mac Pro (running 10.6) and an old macbook (running 10.5), the MacBook Pro Hard Drive always gave an unrecognized filesystem error. I was able to use the drive as boot drive on the Mac Pro, so everything is fine.