I've looked around the forums for an answer to this with not much luck so I thought I'd ask here. I have an external HD that was working fine a second ago but now it won't show up in my device list or in Disk Utilty. Can anyone recommend the safest way to 'force mount' this HD without damaging it's contents (if they aren't already!?). Thank you.
Press the eject key until the monitor displays the eject logo, which should force unmount in a safe manner. You should be able to find it on the top right of the keyboard (if your using a Apple based keyboard).
Re-read the post. He wants to mount it, not eject it.
If it won't mount, you can't force it. You'll need something more powerful like Disk Warrior to repair/mount it, if possible.
But now on to the obvious question: Did you restart the computer yet?
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I have restarted and tried it with my laptop and desktop. It's a Western Digital firewire HD. It turns on and I can hear something spinning but it doesn't show on my desktop. Troubling indeed. I'll look into Disk Warrior, thanks.
Shut everything down. Unplug every thing and disconnect the Cable connecting the drive to the computer. Disconnect all other peripherals. Plug-in and reboot the computer. Plug-in drive, power up drive and connect drive to the computer.
This has worked many times that I can document. If it still does not mount check Disk Utility to be sure the drive is not visible there. Then try a different cable, then moving drive to a different enclosure. I have seen more enclosure failures than drive failures but obviously either is a possibility.
If it does work there is a chance the Spotlight index on the external drive is now corrupt. Use Onyx to force a rebuild of the Spotlight index for the external drive, and walk away while it does its thing. Be sure the computer is set to never sleep when you walk away.
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Do NOT Touch this computer!!! Touching this computer WILL cause irreversible brain damage.
Press the eject key until the monitor displays the eject logo, which should force unmount in a safe manner. You should be able to find it on the top right of the keyboard (if your using a Apple based keyboard).
Also I don't think the eject key works this way, it's mean for ejecting optical media, not mounted hard drives. If you keep posting the wrong answers we're going to make you take "Tech" out of your username (j/k)
I don't know what WD external drive model you have, but if it's like most FW models, it's probably at least a FW/USB combo model.
From my own experience with an older WD "Premier" model, try using one of the other FW connections, or the USB connection. On one of my units, one of the FW ports died and WD replaced the drive, but the USB still worked.
Another external combo drive with FW 800 suddenly wouldn't mount but did so after I did an SMC reset on my iMac. So maybe try that.
And as Lars says, at least do a restart, if not a full shutdown and reboot.
Also I don't think the eject key works this way, it's mean for ejecting optical media, not mounted hard drives. If you keep posting the wrong answers we're going to make you take "Tech" out of your username (j/k)
does the disk mount to another computer? are you sure the firewire port works? when its connected to your computer does disk utility see the disk at all? if it doesnt disk warrior wont be much help to you.
assuming you are sure your FW cable/port works try another interface as suggested and if that doesnt work the next thing i would do would be take the drive out of the enclosure and try to put it in another one. be aware this will void the drives warranty, assuming you are still within its time frame.
(j/k)
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