Ownership of Affected Disk error

[MacKenzie999]

Hello...

So I am trying to salvage an external drive that will not show up in the Finder or Disk Utility. It's a 3TB Seagate with FW800 and mini USB ports. I've tried multiple cables on multiple ports on multiple macs with multiple versions of OSX. No dice. It does seem to turn on when supplied power and a port on a mac, I can feel the slight vibration of it.
Purchased Disk Warrior which also doesn't see the disk.
Poking around online got me into messing with the Terminal. Not my comfort zone but I can follow directions reasonably well. Aha! Terminal appears to see the drive, although it won't allow me to do anything based, I assume, on some kind of permissions issue. For example, I enter:

Michaels-Mac-Pro:~ Mike$ diskutil repairvolume /Current Projects (this is the name of the drive)

and get back:

Usage: diskutil repairVolume MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode

Repair the file system data structures of a volume.

Ownership of the affected disk is required.

So, although it won't let me in, this at least feels like progress insofar as the disk is being recognized. Still, that's not good enough. I don't care about salvaging the disk, I'd never trust it again, but I'd love to extract the contents. It's not quite worth a recovery fee to me, at least not yet, but this is important stuff that hadn't yet been backed up.

Any and all suggestions are welcome and appreciated.
Thanks!

 

[Nermal]

Try putting "sudo" in front, ie. "sudo diskutil..."

 

[MacKenzie999]

Try putting "sudo" in front, ie. "sudo diskutil..."

This is what I get:
Michaels-Mac-Pro:~ Mike$ sudo diskutil repairvolume /Current Projects

Usage: diskutil repairVolume MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode

Repair the file system data structures of a volume.

Ownership of the affected disk is required.

 

[Nermal]

I didn't read your original post properly

You probably need to put quotes around "/Current Projects" since it contains a space. Also, it's likely that it should actually be "/Volumes/Current Projects".

"Ownership of the affected disk is required" is information, not an error.

 

[MacKenzie999]

I didn't read your original post properly

You probably need to put quotes around "/Current Projects" since it contains a space. Also, it's likely that it should actually be "/Volumes/Current Projects".

"Ownership of the affected disk is required" is information, not an error.

Now I get the response:
Unable to find disk for /Volumes/Current Projects

 

[Nermal]

Type "diskutil list" to get its identifier (such as disk1s2) and then try using that.

For example:
sudo diskutil repairvolume disk1s2

However, if it's not showing up in Disk Utility then it probably won't show up in diskutil list either...

 

[MacKenzie999]

Type "diskutil list" to get its identifier (such as disk1s2) and then try using that.

For example:
sudo diskutil repairvolume disk1s2

However, if it's not showing up in Disk Utility then it probably won't show up in diskutil list either...

No luck with that either. Do you think it's worth dismantling the enclosure and connecting with a drive dock? Seems unlikely that all three ports (FWx2 + Mini USB) would be faulty, but it seems like my options are running out here. No exposed screws on the enclosure so opening it up is likely a destructive process. BTW thanks for all your help so far.

 

[Fishrrman]

Can Disk Utility "see" the drive at all?
Even if it only offers the option to "erase" it?

Could be:
- Bad enclosure (take drive out, and it's ok)
- Bad drive controller card (putting drive in another enclosure or dock won't help)
- Bad drive hardware (nothing will help except disassembly of the drive itself, success doubtful)

If you don't care about the enclosure, break it apart and get to the "bare drive".
Then try it using a USB3/SATA "dock" or perhaps a USB3/SATA adapter dongle...

 

[ApfelKuchen]

Hello...

So I am trying to salvage an external drive that will not show up in the Finder or Disk Utility. It's a 3TB Seagate with FW800 and mini USB ports. I've tried multiple cables on multiple ports on multiple macs with multiple versions of OSX. No dice. It does seem to turn on when supplied power and a port on a mac, I can feel the slight vibration of it.
Purchased Disk Warrior which also doesn't see the disk.
Poking around online got me into messing with the Terminal. Not my comfort zone but I can follow directions reasonably well. Aha! Terminal appears to see the drive, although it won't allow me to do anything based, I assume, on some kind of permissions issue. For example, I enter:

Michaels-Mac-Pro:~ Mike$ diskutil repairvolume /Current Projects (this is the name of the drive)

and get back:

Usage: diskutil repairVolume MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode

Repair the file system data structures of a volume.

Ownership of the affected disk is required.

So, although it won't let me in, this at least feels like progress insofar as the disk is being recognized. Still, that's not good enough. I don't care about salvaging the disk, I'd never trust it again, but I'd love to extract the contents. It's not quite worth a recovery fee to me, at least not yet, but this is important stuff that hadn't yet been backed up.

Any and all suggestions are welcome and appreciated.
Thanks!

Rolling back for informational purposes... No, the disk was not being recognized. You entered a command, and Terminal's reply was, essentially, "This is how you use the command." Something was invalid about the command as you entered it, so Terminal gave you the proper command syntax and the definition of the command. As noted, "Ownership required" is just part of the definition.

While it's true that Terminal allows you to perform commands that the GUI may not, fundamental is that the system hardware must recognize the attached drive.

What you really need to know is whether the USB or Firewire ports recognize the attached hardware. If that doesn't happen, all the Disk Utility/diskutil commands in the world won't help.

You can use System Report to see if the attached hardware is recognized. System Report > Hardware > Firewire or System Report > Hardware > USB.

It could even turn out that the fault lies in the port, not the drive. System Report would show that, as well. "No Firewire ports were found" is perfectly normal on my late 2013 iMac. On your machine, it'd mean something was wrong.