Hi. I have an external drive where I back up all my photos and videos - it's 200 gig - almost full. I was transferring some images to my Mac when the firewire came unplugged. Now the Mac - nor any other computer can recognize the external drive (It's a Seagate). I've run the Mac disk utility on it - it shows four partitions - or two main and two subordinate partitions. I ran the repair disk and verify on one and it says it's fine - but still cannot read the volume. The second partition and sub-partition I can't even verify. This external drive contains all our archival photos and I can't just back it up to another computer because I don't have anything with enough memory to do that. Any suggestions to make it readable by computers (Mac or PC) so I can salvage the drive? Is there a way to eliminate the partitions? Thanks for your help!
Mac OS X Partitioned External Drive
- Thread starter KOzdogs
- Start date
VirtualTracy
Thunderbirds are GO!
Hi KOzdogs & welcome to the forums 
This may be a long shot but give it a try anyhow:
I gather that Disc Utility recognises when the drive is connected? Ok, have a look at my attached image and in the window there are 2 mount options; one in the menu bar and the other in the drive info at the bottom. Try the "Mount" icon first and if that doesn't work, then click on the blue / to the right of "Mount Point" in the bottom section of the window.
Of course, make sure you highlight the drive in the left column, the indented Volume that you want to mount.
Let me know how you go.
This may be a long shot but give it a try anyhow:
I gather that Disc Utility recognises when the drive is connected? Ok, have a look at my attached image and in the window there are 2 mount options; one in the menu bar and the other in the drive info at the bottom. Try the "Mount" icon first and if that doesn't work, then click on the blue / to the right of "Mount Point" in the bottom section of the window.
Of course, make sure you highlight the drive in the left column, the indented Volume that you want to mount.
Let me know how you go.
Doctor X
Registered
Stupid Question, but in Disk Utility OR when in your regular Mac account can you "see" the Ex-HD and partitions? Can you "see" the data? If so, you may have to bite the bullet and start saving data!
The good news is bigger Ex-HDs are cheaper these days. You could ALSO try putting the "stuff" in a partition and creating Disk Images and see if you can save/burn those. That is wild speculation on my part; hope it helps.
--J.D.
The good news is bigger Ex-HDs are cheaper these days. You could ALSO try putting the "stuff" in a partition and creating Disk Images and see if you can save/burn those. That is wild speculation on my part; hope it helps.
--J.D.
Hey J.D. -- I can "see" the partition in the Disk Utility -- The same drive shows up multiple times - as shown in the scrren pic in the otehr post, but I can't actually see the data on the drives. When I plus the HD into a Compaq, it just asks if I want to format the drive, and doesn't recognize any data on it at all. Ugh. Maybe it is time to start shopping...
Thanks-
K
Thanks-
K
Doctor X
Registered
Hrrrrm . . . do you have access to DiskWarrior? That can sometimes repair or at least make an image of the drive such you can pull data.
What I, myself, do not know is what a disconnection does to an external drive. It seems strange to me that since you were transferring data from the Ex-HD the disconnection would fry the source. Of course, I have no idea why a disconnection would create partitions.
There are non-destructive partition removal programs out there, but I would go with getting a disk repair program such as DiskWarrior first.
--J.D.
What I, myself, do not know is what a disconnection does to an external drive. It seems strange to me that since you were transferring data from the Ex-HD the disconnection would fry the source. Of course, I have no idea why a disconnection would create partitions.
There are non-destructive partition removal programs out there, but I would go with getting a disk repair program such as DiskWarrior first.
--J.D.
Thanks JD -- I'll look into Disk Warrior. I think I have to resign myself to replacing the HD and trying to salvage the historic data (Family photos http://macosx.com/forums/images/icons/icon9.gif ) off it.
Cheers-
K
Cheers-
K