Hi Philippe, well the suggestion to try the USB port worked instantly. Thank you so much!
To be honest until you mentioned it I had not even looked for a USB port. I put the HDD back in the case, connected the power source which for years I though had been dodgy, and voila lights on and the HD is on my Mac desktop. I am now near the end of copying everything onto another EXT HDD. Raises two questions though: Are there problems with the MyBook firewire ports? and, Why couldn’t Disk Utility and Disk Warrior find it and recognise that it was indeed formatted as OS X Extended? Thanks again. Matt. > > > Message: 1 > Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2020 13:21:44 +0800 > From: Matt Falvey <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > To: Wamug List <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > Subject: Problem with External HDD being not readable > Message-ID: <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 > > Hi, I have a WD 1.5Tb firewire Ext HDD which stores the family videos. > > Over the course of years I have had many problems with it for some reasons > not turning on and on other occasions not showing up on my iMac desktop. It > would work in about 5% of the attempts. > > As I knew I was retiring last year and would have more time available, I put > off worrying about it. Last year in the US I picked up a Voyager S3 3.5 SATA > drive dock to try to bypass the problem, whether it be, the Mybook power > source, the on/off Switch or the WD Case. > > When I loaded the Ext HDD in the dock I had the following message ?The disk > you inserted was not readable by this computer? And it gave me three > options:- Initialize?, Ignore, or Eject. Well, the last two were not going to > be very helpful and the first one Initialize filled me with dread as it was > always formatted as an OS X Extended disc and I believe you can?t initialize > without erasing? > > I have another WD 1Tb Firewire Ext HDD, which loaded into the dock without a > problem, is readable and is in the same format OS X Extended as the ?not > readable? 1.5Tb was. > > > I tried Disk Utility to run First Aid on the 1.5Tb and the Voyager S3 Media > shows up under External, but there is no drop down arrow as there is when I > use the 1.0Tb. > It states 1.5TB Unitialized. Then Location - Eternal, Connection - USB, > Partition Map - Not Supported, S.M.A.R.T. status - Not Supported, Capacity - > 1.5 Tb, Child count -0, Type - Disk, Device -disk1. > > When I ran First Aid on it, I got the Message, ?First Aid process is > complete, click Done to continue? The arrow Show Details when activated says > - Operation successful. > The only other options available on Disk Utility are ?Erase? which obviously > I don?t want to do and ?Info? which repeats much of the previous information > in the last paragraph along with, Volume type - Unknown, File system - > Unknown, Writable - No, Owners enabled - No, Is encrypted - no, Can be > verified - no, Can be repaired - no, Bootable - no, Journaled - No. > > I tried DiskWarrior. A disk appeared as [Unrecognizable Format] - under > Directory but the Rebuild button was greyed out > > Overview - Directory cannot be rebuilt, the partition map may be corrupt. > -This disk is an external USB disk. > -This disk is 1.50 TB in size. > -This disk is not mounted. > -disk1 > > Directory Optimisation Index - empty > > A Directory Optimization Index could not be calculated for this disk because > of a disk malfunction. > Rebuild this disk as soon as possible to recover your files. > > The disk did not appear under Files or Hardware. > > > Any ideas of where do I go from here to try and recover the files? Are there > any alternative strategies that I could try or I might have missed? > > Or should I be looking at a Data Recovery Application or a Data Recovery > Store? > > Thanks > > Matt. > > > > Message: 3 > Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2020 14:02:40 +0800 > From: Philippe Chaperon <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > To: WAMUG Mailing List <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > Subject: Re: Problem with External HDD being not readable > Message-ID: <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Hi Matt, > > So sorry to hear of your dilemma. Indeed if you Initialise your external > drive it will wipe off any of the data it contains. > > I have in the past used the application Data Rescue successfully in > recovering data from damaged USB Camera memory cards, so this may be one > option. > > Alternatively, does your WD firewire has also a USB port? If so have you > tried to connect it to your computer via USB? I had a problem with an old WD > Firewire drive which was not even mounting on my desktop. But I managed to > mount it using the USB port and promptly copied it. > > I have been using a lot of WD external drives through the years, but have had > a few failures, and lately 2 x WD 1.5 TB drives failed. But due to updated > copy of my data using SuperDuper I did not have to worry. Must add that the % > failure of the WD is very low considering the amount of such drives I have > used and the large amount of data they contain! > > Wishing you success in recovering the data. > > Best Regards, > > Philippe Chaperon > Philippe dit la Grenouille ...?
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