External Firewire Drive stopped mounting

LostChild · #1 December 13th, 2005, 07:22 AM

I was using my new-used Lacie external drive to transfer files from my tower G4 (operating on 10.3.9) onto my brand new Powerbook G4 (10.4.3)
I would repeatedly switch the firewire cable between the computers.
Everything was going well... until when I disconnected the firewire cable from my powerbook and plugged it into my tower, it did not show up in my finder this time.
I unplugged it and replugged it,
plugged it into a different outlet( I bet that's not the right word for it) on the tower (it has 2 firewire outlets),
tried plugging it into my powerbook again,
tried removing both ends of the firewire cable and switching it around,
Tried unpluggin the drive from the powerbook, then uplugging the drive from its power source, turned off my powerbook, took out the battery. Then I waited 15 minutes. I then turned back on my computer, and connected the drive to its power source, then turned it on, and then finally connected it to my computer. Nothing.
I checked disk utility, verified the disk, it came out fine, but the volume on the disk is dimmed and refuses to mount, but also checks out when I verify. If it's not the drive but the volume that is the problem, I don't want to lose the files on that volume.

So do you have any ideas on how to get it to mount, and how come this happend in the first place? Was it because I detached it and re-attached it too many times? Is it the firewire cable, that got damaged from over use?

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Tommo · #2 December 13th, 2005, 11:52 AM

You were unmounting the disk before removing the cable weren't you ?

One further point of confusion, why use an external drive at all ? Why not boot one of the Macs in target disk mode and transfer the files directly ?

LostChild · #3 December 13th, 2005, 06:38 PM

Yeah, I was unmounting before unplugging the firewire cable. I think I forgot to do that once a few days ago, but everything seemed to be all good.

I was downloading files with one computer and then viewing the files on the other, because downloading large amounts of files slows the computer significantly, so I wouldn't be able to view video files on it. I used to just use the ethernet cable, but I found that they don't work between my imac and G4 tower so I got used to using it to transfer files quickly. It has been working well this way for a month or two. I just got my new laptop in the last 24 hours, so i used it to transfer the most important files that were being stored on the external drive, but I didn't have room for all of the files.

so yeah, does that help?

renasia · #4 December 13th, 2005, 06:56 PM

Try running "Disk Warrior" on it. I have a LaCie 150 in 5 partitions. Sometimes one or more of the partitions don't show up and Disk warrior is the only utility able to "see" the drive, then rebuild the directory to make it accessable again.

LostChild · #5 December 13th, 2005, 09:34 PM

So my only option is to pay to get it fixed? I tried the demo virtuallab, and the price to just get my data back would be $622.45! They must be insane to think I would pay that much, that's like $10 per GB. But the good news is that it saw all my files on the drive, so I know they aren't gone.
So DiskWarrior is a one time fee deal?

Does anybody have an idea that wouldn't cost me anything?

:::UPDATED:::

Okay Disk Warrior will not restore my hard drive because it can't get it to show on the desktop, or in other words... mount. It was able to see all the files though and it worked on it, but it wont finish restoring because of a problem.

So that did not work, good thing I didn't pay for it.