Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Recommend an app to try and fix an old external drive that power up but won't mount?

A

AVR2

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 16, 2006
427
10
I've pulled a couple of old Maxtor USB drives out of storage, where they've been for years. I'd like to see what's on them, but both of them now refuse to mount and the Mac wants to initialise them.

None of the data on them is going to be vital, but I'd still like to see what's there. Are there any apps that might be able to help me? DiskWarrior looks like it might, but obviously it's pretty expensive and there's no trial version (for obvious reasons, I guess).
 
What format are the drives in? It's possible if they were formatted to be useable by both Macs and PCs that you can bring it back to life merely by attempting to connect to a PC. Then try the Mac again. Just a thought.

Have had drives not want to mount on the Mac side but would on the PC side... then poof, the Mac side recognized it again.
 
Were the drives in question previously used ONLY with a Mac (thus, they would have a Mac format)
or
Were the drives used with BOTH Macs and Windows?

You could get the error msg you're getting with some drives with older formatting/file systems.

There could be other problems, possibly hardware-based.
Do you hear the drives "spin up"?
Is there any additional sound that might indicate the actuator/heads are moving?
 
The drives are both HFS+ and have only ever been used with OSX.

Both of them spin up and you can hear and feel movement of the heads before you get the "this disk is not readable" message.

Re: the suggestion of using Disk Drill - has anyone here actually used it themselves? Googling it brings up a LOT of negative reviews.
 
Try "Data Rescue". Long-time utility with good reviews.

How about some more information on the drives.
Are they enclosed in "factory enclosures"?
That is, were they bought as "ready to use" drives?
As distinguished from "bare drives" that one puts into one's own enclosure?

Is it possible to take them OUT OF the enclosures they're in, and try them in something like a USB3/SATA docking station?
 
AVR2 said:
The drives are both HFS+ and have only ever been used with OSX.

Both of them spin up and you can hear and feel movement of the heads before you get the "this disk is not readable" message.

Re: the suggestion of using Disk Drill - has anyone here actually used it themselves? Googling it brings up a LOT of negative reviews.
Click to expand...
Yes, I've used them plenty of times and they are legit in discovering lost files. I can vouch for their professionalism - if you ever bought their Disk Drill Media Recovery app via Mac App Store like I have, you can safely download their main app from cleverfiles.com and have that program be unlocked to make full disk recovery.

That's what I've been doing and was surprised at the time that they allowed me to do that - pleasantly surprised.

Is that program around $10 or $15? Anyway. Just to say OK for Disk Drill.

Disk Drill has more than once saved my tush on lost files.. old ISO's and a plethora of JPEG and PNG images - my entire wallpaper collection of old CGWallpapers-wallpapers was found again and all sorts of stuff I probably should not have let become re-discovered. Things like scanned images of private documents for online identity proofing.

One can only imagine what some dude might do to this Mac's drive after the fact if I don't do a nuclear-type formatting.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back