# WD external hard drive won't mount



## superstar5220 (Nov 4, 2011)

I have a WD external hard drive that will not mount to my Mac. It was previously working fine then just stopped one day. The drive is recognizable in Disk Utility and System Information, I just cannot get to the files. I also tried to do a disk repair in Disk Utility but it failed. It is formatted HFS+. I'd appreciate any help!


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

What reason did it give for failing the disk repair?


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## superstar5220 (Nov 4, 2011)

The error is:
Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

You may have to reformat it. Being it's a Time Machine disk, you don't have any other files on it, do you?


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## billbeas (Nov 11, 2011)

If it's a time machine disk, the files aren't in a format that's readable outside of time machine. 

When I wanted to move my time machine volume to another drive I wasn't able to.

Bill


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## superstar5220 (Nov 4, 2011)

I left it plugged in after getting the repair error and it became recognized as a drive a little while later. Not sure why it wasn't working before, but I was able to retrieve my files. Thanks for the help!


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## billbeas (Nov 11, 2011)

You got a second chance. You may want to move all of your files off of the drive and replace it, or at least do a disk repair repeatedly until you get no errors.

In my opinion the disk is dying.

Bill


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