Disk Insertion Error On External Drive

[Splinky]

My Fantom 160 GB Ext Firewire drive is not being recognized. I keep getting the follwing message.
Disk Insertion
The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer
Initalize Ignore Eject


I choose to initialize and disk utility opens. But does not let me run first aid.
I also tried Disk Warrior. The disk shows up as unknown format, and does not allow me to run the diaganostic.
The drive was working fine last night.

Would anyone have any other suggestion?

Your help is apreciated.

[Splinky]

The last thing I did was install Suffitt 10. Then I shut down for the night.

[ra3ndy]

I really hate to say it, but it sounds like your drive has gone bad and lost its formatting. If you plug in the drive, choose ignore, and open Disk Utility, does it recognize it? If so, can you click Repair Disk?

The formatting is the first part of the drive, where the directory, the catalog, b-tree, etc are stored. All this tells your computer how to read the data on the drive. If that sector goes bad (via repeated unplugging wihtout unmounting, typically. or just plain old defective hardware) then you're in a tough spot I'm afraid. You can't simply replace the formatting without destroying the data on the drive.

Now's the time to determine how much that data is worth. In general, if you have good phone skills, you can get a fair deal on a data recovery service. (meaning about $500 if you're lucky)

[Splinky]

I probably won't take too bad of a hit on the data loss. Any good data recovery apps? I ran one called Data Rescue a while back. This one took forever to run.

[Splinky]

I'm sorry. I forgot to mention. No, I am unable to click repair.

[Nocayo]

My problem is the same, but my external 250 GB HD (an EasyBackUpSystems model BT3506-UF) does show up in DU. When I try to repair it though I get the following message:

First Aid failed
Disk Utility stopped verifying “disk1s3” because the following error was encountered:

Filesystem verify or repair failed.


This came about all of a sudden and the HD is not making any clicking noises.
I would not like to loose the data I have in it as it includes my iTunes library.

Your help will be appreciated.

Nocayo
iBook G4 1.2 GHz Power PC
Memory1.25 GB
OSX 10.5.8

[djackmac]

DiskWarrior is your best option at this point.

[Nocayo]

Hello djackmac and thank you.

I followed your advice and rebuilt the directory using DiskWarrior.
The HD had a few glitches that were repaired and is now back to normal.
Again thank you.

Nocayo