unable to reapair external disk, unmount error

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Chrisjay2001

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I have a Western Digital 500gb external hard drive, with 2 partitions, 'KAINARC' and 'JUNGLEMAC', connected to my Intelmac (Tiger 10.4.11 via my firewire, i have connected via usb but the problem is still the same). I may have shut down the drive improperly to cause this situation.

KAINARC now appears on my desktop, but the partition of JUNGLEMAC does not. I go to disk utility and both partitions are visable, KAINARC is mounted but JUNGLEMAC is not. I cannot mount JUNGLEMAC.

When i try to verify and repair the partition I get the message:

Verify and Repair disk “JUNGLEMAC”
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit


1 non HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error


So I try to verify and repair the partition KAINARC but get this message:

Verify and Repair disk “KAINARC”
Repairing disk failed with error Could not unmount disk





So I have opened diskwarrior (unbelievably long time to start up and scan disks) in the hope of fixing the hard drive, but when i try to repair I get the error message 'unable to unmount KAINARC'.

I have tried other repair/recover programs but get the same message: 'Could not unmount disk KAINARC'

Im asuming that to fix the hard drive it has to be able to unmount KAINARC.

Does anyone have any ideas of how I can fix this problem. I would normally reformat but I have a lot of stuff on the hard drive that I dont wont to lose.

chrisjay2001
 
I'm assuming that KAINARC is your start up volume. You can't repair or unmount the start up volume.

I've heard some people can get a volume to mount from TechTool that Disk Utility won't. Were you able to use Disk Warrior to do repair on JUNGLEMAC?
 
No KAINARC is my external hard drive, it is not a start up disk. It has a partition called JUNGLEMAC.

I try to repair the disk but the programs inability to unmount KAINARC at the start of the repair procedure is the problem
 
What kind of data is on KAINARC? Could some of your applications be on that drive? If so, do any of those applications have associated login items? If both of these are true, then one possible reason it can't unmount the drive is that there is some file in use on that drive.

What happens if you boot up WITHOUT the external drive connected, then open Disk Utility, THEN connect the drive and try to repair it?
 
There are no applications on the external hard drive KAINARC, just photos, home movies that sort of stuff.

when i boot up WITHOUT the external drive connected, then open Disk Utility,it doesnt see it, until i plug the drive in
 
Chrisjay2001 said:
when i boot up WITHOUT the external drive connected, then open Disk Utility,it doesnt see it, until i plug the drive in
Click to expand...
That makes perfect sense -- Disk Utility is not going to "see" a drive that isn't connected to the computer.

My point in this exercise was to see if somehow, at startup, something was getting loaded from the external drive and remaining active, preventing the unmounting of the drive.

So... after booting up with the drive disconnected, loading Disk Utility, then connecting the drive and powering it up, will it let you repair the drive?
 
No , it wont let me repair the drive after doing what you suggested.

When it tries an error message comes up saying

Verify and Repair disk “KAINARC”
Repairing disk failed with error Could not unmount disk
 
That is very strange. Got some other things that you may want to try:

1) Try repairing each partition individually. Instead of clicking on the device in Disk Utility (the non-indented device listing, which has your partitions listed in an indented fashion below), click on the partition that's giving you trouble and repair each partition individually.
2) Boot from your OS X Install CD/DVD, launch Disk Utility from the "Installer" or "Utilities" menu, and see if your drive will repair that way.
 
I've had the same problem, and ended up having to use Disk Warrior to recover the files onto another drive, toast the uncooperative drive, reformat, and move the recovered files back to the reformatted drive.

It's not fast - even on Firewire. I let it run overnight for a 60GB drive. DW will let you set up a logical disk on the desktop to inspect the recovered files before toasting the bad drive. You should see the entire folder structure, except the possibility of a few corrupted files. If you don't like the way it looks, abort and try again.

Of course you need a drive as large as the files you want to recover, since it ddoesn't do any compression . It's a recovery tool, not a backup. I don't know if youi can use the logical partition on the same drive. I'd see if DW has any info on this, but not take the chance it it doesn't.

Drives are fairly cheap (<20¢ a GB), and USB 2.0 cases are dirt cheap. My preference is the Galaxy Metal Gear II. I get the combo USB/Firewire, but my ancient Titanium has USB 1.1. I'm going to buy another this week, because my crappy generic FW case croaked, and one drive won't mount. So I need qa new box to recover the drive's files. You can get a monster drive and case for less than $100 - or even cheaper for a smaller drive, and you've got added security of independent drives which you can always use to back each other up.
 
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