external hard drive; light flashing but not showing up (various solutions tried)

[jshire]

Hi,
Hopefully someone can suggest something not already tried. I have a WD 4tb external drive connected to a mbp. The light flashes but it doesn't show up. I've spent quite a while trying things such as disk utility first aid, un mount, repair, erase etc & all that happens is I get a message; File system verify or repair failed. : (-69845). Each time it does that a new 'copy' of the drive appears in the left hand panel, under 'external' - there are now 8 of them, & clicking the unmount / eject arrow in disk utility doesn't do anything. I've also tried checking the activity monitor of fsck processes but can't see any of those. So, the drive appears to be able to function but not accessible. Any other suggestions? Thanks

 

[appltech]

And was this external WD drive with its own power supply/cable?
Not sure whether this is a 3.5 or 2.5 drive

 

[chabig]

It sounds like it has become corrupted and unrepairable. A reformat is probably called for.

 

[Fishrrman]

Is this a 3.5" drive in an external enclosure?

If so, are you using the drive's own external power supply block?

A laptop Mac won't have enough internal USB bus power to run a 3.5" drive.

If the WD drive is a 2.5" platter-based drive, or an SSD, the problem may lie elsewhere.

 

[jshire]

it's a 2.5" hd. It is 'working' as running diagnostics confirms that but I can't reformat it or erase it etc. It appears whatever system on it that allows its profile to be created has an issue so I'm looking for options other than those already mentioned.

 

[Fishrrman]

Have you tried the WD Tools app (I think that's the name) on it?

Do you have a PC available?
If so, have you tried connecting it to the PC?

 

[jshire]

yes, have tried on different macs & pc's. Actually managed to get it a bit further now - ran 'first aid' & it said everything was ok, but then when I tried to erase / re-format I got this message;

Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Couldn’t open device. : (-69877)

Operation failed…

 

[jshire]

ps. in terminal it now says;


Read-Only Media: No
Read-Only Volume: Not applicable (no file system)

Device Location: External


Removable Media: Fixed

 

[Ambrosia7177]

it's a 2.5" hd. It is 'working' as running diagnostics confirms that but I can't reformat it or erase it etc. It appears whatever system on it that allows its profile to be created has an issue so I'm looking for options other than those already mentioned.

I recently had a similar experience with a 2.5: SSD drive.

At first, I thought it was a bad external enclosure, but my other external enclosures seemed to work.

In my case, my laptop took an unexpected fall which damaged the display, and probably damaged the logic board and/or I/O board, so most of the time my USB port works - and thus my external drive works - but sometimes it doesn't work.

Oh, come to think of it, in my situation, I had a solid blue liht that did not flash. Meaning that data wasn't being transferred betwen the drive and my laptop.

If it were me, I would first try another external drive and another external case and another cable.

Process of elimination.

With my ongoing damaged MBP, I found that a simple re-boot fixed this same issue last weekend when I was trying to back things up.

Not sure if any of this help, but definitely do try to eliminate what could be the problem by trying other pieces of hardware.

Good luck!

 

[Basic75]

I understand it's a 2.5" HDD in an external enclosure, which I'm assuming is USB bus powered. In my experience the quality of the cable can make the difference between such a drive working or not working. I recommend a not too long, high quality USB cable to ensure that the drive receives enough power.