My external HD disappears about a minute after i connect it

[miguelfh]

hi..

i have been searching for the same problem in the forum but i can't find any answers...

- late 2008 macbook 2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo on OSX 10.7.2
- 3TB WD My Book Essential

The problem began one night i left my mac on all night.. the next morning my external hd was missing..

- when i connect it i shows up in Disk Utility but DISSAPEARS AFTER 30 SECONDS OR A MINUTE.. it shows up with the name i assigned months ago.. "Media 3TB"(grey) below the "3TB WD My Book 1130 Media" but no icon shows up in the Desktop or Finder

There appears to be nothing wrong with it, externally, i.e. the drives spin up, and the LED lights show activity when I plug the USB cable to the Macbook and pull it out again.


heres what i have tried

1)I repaired permissions of my mac and the ones from the disk "3TB WD My Book 1130 Media" which seems to be able to repair in the 1 minute window.. but when i try to repair permissions of the partition "Media 3TB" it disappears after a minute or so .....

2)rebooted my mac a few times

3)I disconnected the USB cable on both the WD and on the Macbook, and reconnected several times. i also tried another power source for the HD

4)I tried all the USB ports on the Macbook.

5)connected the WD drive to a Windows.. i recognizes that a hardware has been connected but it doesn't shows up... (i suppose its because its formatted for mac)

6) Tried Disk Warrior... but it can't see the drive when i connect it..

after all this.. i downloaded the WD official software.. i installed it in my mac and connected my HD... it recognized a HD but didn't mount it.. after a minute.. it disappeared.. (note. When i have the WD software, the disk utility can't see the drive at all so i uninstalled it)

This is the INFO from Disk utility...

Name : Media 3TB
Type : Partition

Disk Identifier : disk3s1
Mount Point : Not mounted
File System : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Connection Bus : USB
Device Tree : IODeviceTree:/PCI0/EHC1@1D,7
Writable : Yes
Universal Unique Identifier : xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Capacity : 3 TB (3,000,214,966,272 Bytes)
Owners Enabled : No
Can Turn Owners Off : Yes
Can Be Formatted : Yes
Bootable : Yes
Supports Journaling : Yes
Journaled : No
Disk Number : 3
Partition Number : 1


( Note the "Owners Enabled : No"

I have very important info in here.. please someone help me.... :S

i found a similar problem but in that case the hard drive don't disappears.....
External Hard drive shows in Disk Utility, but not in Finder - MacRumors Forums...

i will be happy to donate by paypal to anyone how can solve this..

 

[Kevriano]

Have you tried a different usb cable, because it certainly sounds like that's a possibility, but disk utility can see the drive, so it's probably not that.
How old is the WD drive?
If DU can see it you may be able to reformat it, but you will of course lose all data if you do. Short of that though, it's going to be hard to tell ifit's a faulty drive without trying to be honest.

 

[miguelfh]

the HD is 6 months old.. i will try a new cable today i hope its that because i hope is that because information recovery services are very expensive and i have "sensitive" information in there..

 

[Kevriano]

They are, but there is a very good thread about data recovery on the forum too, well worth a look.

 

[miguelfh]

i was thinking about formatting the disk and then use a recovery data to see if it can find anything...

do you know about any program that can format a disk in my situation??

 

[Kevriano]

Disk Utility. You can reformat provided it shows up in the DU window, which you say it does.
You need to select "erase" and pick Mac OS extended (Journaled) as format.
This will erase all you have, and may make it very difficult to recover anything.

Before you do, read through Randy B Singers excellent post here:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os...541-macintosh-os-x-data-recovery-options.html