Well, It is probably more likely that you lost the onboard controller card. It does sound like it. I had something similar happen to a 2 TB drive about 3 years ago. It wouldn’t let me write to the drive and apparently couldn’t read from it. I changed out cables, no dice. Changed out the power unit, again no dice. So, I got some visual help, determined what the controller card model was and ordered a replacement. I had it installed and the drive came back to life. I then backed up everything from it to another device.
As an aside, I am going to start purchasing some 2 TB SSD units and make a sequential backup of my 10 TB multimedia drive (lots of movies and music I have acquired over the years). That may take a while, but it will be worth it should the primary die on me. I am also thinking about an online cloud provider that I can upload the entire thing to (at 100 Mbits/sec, that’s going to take a while). -Eric On Nov 10, 2025, at 06:17, Jessica Moss <[email protected]> wrote: I’m not sure what’s suddenly gone down with my Toshiba external hard drive, since it was working fine last week, aside from me having had it for several years, so it’s probably on its last leg, and I unfortunately don’t have a secondary drive to back it up, and it may have just gone caput. I’ve plugged it into my Mac, am hearing it start up, as well as feeling it vibrate, but it’s not showing up in finder. However, it’s showing up in Disc Utility, but appears not to be able to read it, and disc utility acts like it couldn’t perform first aid on it. So I’m guessing at this point, I should consider the drive damaged? -- The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor. You can reach mark at: [email protected] and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at [email protected] The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/macvisionaries/679C0F09-1D64-43AD-9726-486068480F54%40omnicommander.com. -- The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor. You can reach mark at: [email protected] and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at [email protected] The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/macvisionaries/28303375-7AAC-4F31-B265-35941D7FDF41%40gmail.com.
