# IMac suddenly won't mount external hard drive



## Rethink-Media (Sep 29, 2011)

I have a Western Digital 500GB IBook external hard drive. It has worked fine for several years. Recently it began to cause my IMac to run very slowly, forcing me to eject it. When reconnecting it, it would intermittently not mount, but when the power to the drive was disconnected and reconnected, it would (stubbornly) mount.

Recently it has refused to mount, I used "Disk Utilities" to try to correct it, but even though "Disk Utilities" "sees" the drive it doesn't let me select the "Verify Disk" or "Repair Disk" buttons.

I spoke to a tech at Western Digital who suggested it could be the "interface" of the drive had gone bad and suggested I install the drive in a new enclosure with a new interface, which I did - same result - the computer "sees" the drive but doesn't let me access it to try to repair it.

Help!!!


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

Being you said years, the hard drive it self could be bad. How is the disk formatted, HFS+ or FAT32?


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## Rethink-Media (Sep 29, 2011)

I believe it is FAT32.

The thing is, I went into disk utilities on my IMac and tried to fix it, the drive shows in the left hand window with the used/available space displayed - so the computer "sees" the drive - it just can't access the data.

Could it be that something happened to the partition.

The drive has never made any funny noises and I can feel it spinning in the enclosure.

Is there another way to access the data?

I really appreciate your help!!


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

If it's FAT32, then the Mac can't repair it, but you can connect it to any PC to read it. So plug it into a different computer, Mac or Windows, and see if it comes up.


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