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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Mounting external hard drive

kerrvernon - Mar 15, 2006 - 12:18 pm

Hi there,
I have an iomega 160gb external hard drive which has stopped showing up on my desktop. I'm running on Mac OS X 10.4.5.

This has happened before and usually switching it on and off again and a restart does the job - but nothing seems to work.

Also - in the more info section on the apple system profiler when I click on volumes in the network section the message is 'no information found'

Any suggestions? - I couldn't find much on the iomega site and the disc it came with seems to only run on OS 9.

Am starting to despair. Please help!!

Thanks in advance.

philippe99 - Mar 15, 2006 - 12:27 pm

Hi and welcome on macosx.com

Try this (reset USB & FW buses)
Unplug the hard drive from the Mac port
Un plug the Mac frm the power line and let it like this for 10'
Repower the Mac and reboot it
After the boot, reconnect the Iomega to the Mac port THEN ONLY repower the Iomega

Is this better ?
Regards
Philippe

kerrvernon - Mar 15, 2006 - 1:12 pm

Hi there,
Thanks for the quick response. Alas it hasn't worked. After your instructions I tried I restart to see if that would make any difference and my machine then wouldn't reboot. I was faced with a blue screen for ages and eventually just switched it off. Any other ideas? Please :-)

philippe99 - Mar 16, 2006 - 6:18 am

Steps to try

(1) follow the following article to reset the PRAM
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

(2) follow the following instructions for selecting the startup partition
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106178

(3) follow the instructions in the following Apple's article to repair the drive while booting on the installation disc or booting in single user mode (and using the fsck Unix repair command)
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214

Regards
Philippe

kerrvernon - Mar 16, 2006 - 8:28 am

Hi Phillippe,
Thanks again for getting back to me.
I've tried steps 1 & 2 but step 3 looks extremely complex and not something I'd like to try and tackle. I don't suppose there is a simpler option? I'm also noticing that on restarts my computer often hangs could there be somehting more serious happening here? My computer is only a few months old will any of this be covered under warranty?
Regards, Kerr Vernon

kerrvernon - Mar 16, 2006 - 8:28 am

Forgot to say - Steps 1 & 2 didn't work. I've also tried a disk repair form the start up disk too and that's hasn't helped either.

philippe99 - Mar 16, 2006 - 1:16 pm

So, now, after all these tests failing, I would think that's something going wrong with your ports... or with the Iomega.

Perhaps is it a good idea to call Apple (yes, one year of warranty) and explain you lost the communication with the Iomega WHILE AT THE SAME moment you face problems to boot ... do not only speak about the Iomega, they'll say that the Iomega is the culprit alone

And by the way, without the Iomega drive, is the boot ok ?

Philippe

kerrvernon - Mar 16, 2006 - 1:22 pm

Thanks Phillippe.
I'm taking it in to get repiared tomorrow morning under the warranty. There's a whole load of things wrong. It hangs on reboots and i've also just noticed that neither sherlock or spotlight is working! Fingers crossed.

kerrvernon - Mar 17, 2006 - 11:53 am

Hello again,
I took my machine into to get repaired and they advised me to back everything up before I let them attempt a repair. This isn't exactly ideal seeing as the major problem is that I can't see my external hard drive to back things up in the first place. I will have to back everything up to DVD over the weekend but I wander if there's any last things i can try.
A friend has given me a loan of norton 8 and disk warrior 3 but for some reason my mac won't start up from any of the CD's (even when I selected the CD in prefs as a startup disk) Do you have any other thoughts on how I can reunite my mac with my external hard drive? Thanks in advance!

philippe99 - Mar 18, 2006 - 8:24 am

(1) DO NOT USE Norton on your Tiger: Norton System Tools or related (i.e not the antivirus) is discontinued in Tiger. Run away from Norton stuff ;-)

(2) DW 3.0.3 can boot on Tiger, earlier versions not ! Only DW 3.0.3 and later is able to repair Tiger catalog. Booting on a DW CD can take a long time on Tiger (more than 15' on some configs)

(3) Could a friend give you an external drive, even Windows windows formated, to allow you to test (we'll know if the Iomega is the culprit or not before sending the mac fo repair !!!) and backup
An iPod ?

Phil