Internal Hard Drive Not Being Recognized

[rebelx24]

My 1 TB secondary internal hard drive that I'd had for several years suddenly stopped being recognized by the system today. Disk Utility isn't even detecting it. I was actually trying to view something on it, the finder window got "stuck" and the "pinwheel" cursor appeared, and I had to reboot the computer. When I did, the drive was no longer visible and undetectable by Disk Utility. I opened up the computer, took out the drive, and tried reinserting it, to no avail. Anybody know what the problem might be? For the record, I have a 2.66 dual-core Mac Pro (from 2007) that is running OS 10.7.5.

 

[lclev]

Well since you were trying to access it and it sounds like it did not respond plus now disk utility does not see it, I would guess it has died. They do die and unfortunately they can crash and die fast or over a period of time throw errors the OS fixes until it can not.

You can download Disk Arbitrator and see if it would force it to mount. Hopefully you have a backup as it does not sound good. There are expensive services to retrieve data from a dead drive if you really want the contents. Or you could try Data Rescue or Disk Warrior but they cost.

Lisa

 

[harryb2448]

Boot into Recovery Mode and run Repair Disk and see what is reported. As Lisa has said, as the machine is ten years old the drive has in all probability died. If it has, and you are happy with the machine and operating system, duck over to OWC and purchase an SSD and Icy Dock mounting bracket. The speed difference will rock your socks.