Toshiba external drive quit working with Macbook Pro. Now what?

I am having a problem with the following device:

Disk Description : TOSHIBA External USB 3.0 Media Total Capacity : 1 TB (1,000,204,886,016 Bytes)
Connection Bus : USB Write Status : Read/Write
Connection Type : External S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported
USB Serial Number : 20140507001383C Partition Map Scheme : Master Boot Record

I mistakenly deleted all files except those I had stored on this device; and now I cannot retrieve or even “see” the files I know are stored on the device.

Can you help me recover these files? I do not want to reformat or do anything stupid that would destroy/delete the files. I want to save and use these files.

I can write to external disk: just created a Word document and saved it there. But I cannot see any of the other files that I know are there...at least they were last week, before I decided to delete what I thought were useless Toshiba files.

Thank you for helping me solve this “self-inflicted” problem.

OldManNeedsHelp said:

I mistakenly deleted all files except those I had stored on this device; and now I cannot retrieve or even “see” the files I know are stored on the device.

Click to expand...

Just want to make sure I understand 100%.

Are you saying that you deleted these files from your computers internal hard drive…and when you went to this external hard drive (where backups/duplicates of these files were/are stored)…the external hard drive isn't working properly either??

- Nick

I only deleted files--just a few, maybe three--from the external drive. Did not touch internal hard drive.

OldManNeedsHelp said:

I mistakenly deleted all files except those I had stored on this device; and now I cannot retrieve or even “see” the files I know are stored on the device.

Click to expand...

This is the statement that has me confused from the 1st post:

"I mistakenly deleted all files except those I had stored on this device…"

Very confusing sentance the way it is written.

OldManNeedsHelp said:

I only deleted files--just a few, maybe three--from the external drive. Did not touch internal hard drive.

Click to expand...

Ok…nothing was deleted from the internal HD.

This external HD…you said that you deleted just a few files (maybe three) from it. Were these all the files stored on this external HD? And are these the three files you would like to recover?

Bottom line: Is the basic problem that approx. three files were deleted from the external HD…and you would like to recover them?

- Nick

OldManNeedsHelp said:

I am having a problem with the following device:

Disk Description : TOSHIBA External USB 3.0 Media Total Capacity : 1 TB

I mistakenly deleted all files except those I had stored on this device; and now I cannot retrieve or even “see” the files I know are stored on the device.

Can you help me recover these files? I do not want to reformat or do anything stupid that would destroy/delete the files. I want to save and use these files.

I can write to external disk: just created a Word document and saved it there. But I cannot see any of the other files that I know are there...at least they were last week, before I decided to delete what I thought were useless Toshiba files.

Click to expand...

Hello, as to Nick's question, see the first bolded statement above - you've copied files from your computer (assume MBPro; what OS is installed) to the external HD, and THEN did you delete the same files off of your computer's drive? If so, do you have any other backup, such as Time Machine or a cloned drive?

Second, see the lower bolded statement referring to 'useless Toshiba files' - how do you know these were 'useless' files or crucial to the function of the external HD?

Do you know the file format of the Toshiba drive (e.g. FAT32, MacOS HFS)? If not already done, open Disk Utility and see if the drive can be read and what information is provided - determine if there is more than one partition now? Just for starters - good luck! Dave

P.S. Well, Nick beat me to posting next, but seems like we are still interpreting that OP differently - will see what the response may be?

Notice that his Toshiba external drive is using a partition scheme of "Master Boot Record". That means the drive was somehow formatted to FAT-32 or exFAT. Neither HFS nor NTFS use that partition scheme. Recovering deleted files from a FAT drive is tricky because FAT is a non journaled file system.

Thanks, in advance, for all this help.

I stupidly deleted key files; that's how the problem started, no doubt. But I only deleted files that seems to be associated with the device. I did not delete the key file I'm now searching for.

The folder I want to retrieve was not deleted by me; therefore, I assume, it's still there.

Initially I thought maybe if I re-saved the key files I stupidly deleted back to the external device, then it would allow me again to see the missing folder. So, using another external device by Toshiba, I copied and save the key files to the new device. But that did not solve the problem.

Here's the set of files that I saved anew to the device and what is currently seen on the device:

DownloadForMac_SanDiskSecureAccessV2.0.pdf
Mac Driver
NTI
Pogoplug PC
Quick Reference Guide.pdf
QuickStartGuide_SanDiskSecureAccessV2.0.pdf
SanDiskSecureAccessV2_win.exe
SanDiskSecureAccessV2.0
Setup.exe
test (Note: this is the Word document I created yesterday to test if I could still write to it.)
Tuxera NTFS for Mac.dmg
Warranty.pdf

But saving these files to the device did not solve the problem; I still cannot access the missing folder.

Any and all suggestions will be appreciated.

Truly this OldManNeedsHelp

Thanks

The question is what format was the external drive.

It sounds like you never formatted it for the Mac. So is it possibly NTFS?

Have you tried to repair it in Disk Utility?