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trellaine

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 24, 2009
154
19
West Coast
I have my ext hdd setup with time machine for the past year and a half. I just moved and tried resetting up the hdd to my iMac. I just plugged the USB cable into the iMac and it should work again? My ext hdd doesn't need a power source.

I sort of hear something from the hdd but I can't get the mac to recognize it nor can I do any backups.

Any ideas?

Thanks
 
Try Disk Utility. Finder -> Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility -> Check hard drive. Also repair your permissions
 
I ran into something similar and found out that my usb cable was bad.

Apparently, these cheapo cables they supply with pretty much anything don't hold the bending and twisting.

Worth a try before you go toss the darn thing out :)
 
I ran into something similar and found out that my usb cable was bad.

Apparently, these cheapo cables they supply with pretty much anything don't hold the bending and twisting.

Worth a try before you go toss the darn thing out :)

If it's just USB it's good thing. New USB cable costs only few dollars
 
I've also had a USB cable fail before. The hard drive appeared to be powered but would not connect. Replacing the cable fixed the problem.
 
Nothing yet

I ran into something similar and found out that my usb cable was bad.

Apparently, these cheapo cables they supply with pretty much anything don't hold the bending and twisting.

Worth a try before you go toss the darn thing out :)

Hmmm I switched USB cables and I can hear some clicking which appears to be from the ext hdd but I still can't see it in the finder.

Is it something I am not doing correctly? I thought I just plug it in and then time machine works.

Thanks
 
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