Maxtor External Firewire HD won't mount

I am on an Imac G5 (Isight) and my exernal HD won't mount. System Profiler recognizes the external 1394 hard drive and when I try Disk Utility, it recognizes it, too, but the verify and repair buttons are dimmed so that is no help. I only want the data off of it (mostly music) as I now have a newer, larger external HD. I have the latest versions of Tech Tool Pro and Disk Warrior but they don't recognize it either unless there is a procedure I don't know about and that's entirely possible given the fact that I just used them for the first time last week. I have tried turning the drive off and on repeatedly, disconnecting and reconnnecting it to the firewire port and even hitting it firmly several times but haven't tried the "putting it in the freezer for 4 hours" trick yet. Anyone have any suggestions other than spending almost a hundred dollars on Data Rescue or File Salvage?

The disk itself could be corrupted, or the Firewire interface could be broken, or in the simplest case, your firewire cable could be damaged. Have you tried systematically eliminating each of these? The cable is easy - try a new one. Ditto for the interface itself. Do you have anything else you can plug in that uses the same firewire port? Have you tried a different firewire port on the iMac?

Finally, the disk. If you can try it on a different Mac, that would be the best. If not, the only other ways I know how to test it would be to load it up on PC running a Linux distro that recognizes Apple's HFS+ disk format (I know that SuSE does this, and I am pretty sure that Ubuntu does too). Last but not least, if you can access a PC running windows, you have the option of one of the many PC programs that read Mac disks... all of this just to check if the disk itself is readable.

If you try the cable and the firewire port, and these are both good, you may have to face the possibility that the disk has just failed. This does happen from time to time.

Thank you for your reply.

I have tried different firewire cables and the other firewire port as well as another Mac to no avail. I don't have access to a PC running windows. Are you sayng that neither TTP nor DW can help me?

Have you ever heard of the technique with the "freezer?" I guess I really have nothing to lose at this point.

And is there possibly a freeware or shareware program that might help me recover the data? I couldn't find anything.

I haven't heard of the freezer technique, but as you say, you have nothing to lose.

My guess, based on what you have said, is that your disk has died. If you have tried it in another Mac to no good end, that pretty much clinches it. I am not aware of any shareware programs that will let you recover the data.

Just an off chance idea. Do you hear the disk spin up when you plug it in, or when you look at it in Disk Utility? Where I am going here is the power supply. If you have an external power supply, as many of these drives do, perhaps it is faulty? The Firewire interface chip on the drive may be getting enough power right off the firewire line to be able to report what it is, but the drive itself is not being powered. Possible?

I always hear the "whirring" sound. As well as I recall, it's the same sound I always heard. BTW, I had that clicking sound before it stopped mounting and the thing even mounted recently but I got sidetracked with something else and restarted my Mac before getting the files off of it....ARGHAHH!!! Leads me to believe that it just might mount again so I keep trying and posting everywhere looking for possible solutions no matter how far fetched they might be. Thanks for your reply and wish I could find an alternate power supply but the one I have for my other external firewire drive won't fit.

Unplug unit, Restart computer, then plug unit back in. I have had times when I unplugged something accidently(without proper ejection) and then when I went to plug up another device it wouldn't work. So I restarted and then the port was open again.

Have you tried on another computer as well?

jordan2 said:

System Profiler recognizes the external 1394 hard drive and when I try Disk Utility, it recognizes it, too, but the verify and repair buttons are dimmed so that is no help.

Click to expand...

If you restart your mac from the install dvd then these buttons might become accessible.