External FW HD won't mount after apple repaired my ibook HD
 

My ibook G4's hard drive crashed the other day and thankfully apple care still had it under warranty. After getting my repaired ibook back from apple today my external Maxtor firewire hard drive won't mount to my ibook as it did before I had my ibook fixed. Any suggestions on how to get it working again? All of my music is on the drive and I would really like to be able to access it again. Thank You!

I know it may be obvious but make sure the cable or securely attached.
Try a different cable and see if it works
Try attaching the hard drive to another machine and see if it works.

You have to narrow down the problem to the port, cable, or drive.

Do you know precisely what Apple fixed? Did they just replace your hard disk drive or did they do a motherboard replacement? I suppose it is possible that whatever caused your hard disk crash may also have damaged your firewire port, but if that wasn't reported to Apple as a problem, they might simply have replaced the hard drive without checking the ports. While I happen to think it is good practice for a repair facility to make sure that the entire unit is working as expected, I don't know that all centers do this routinely.

Nonetheless, Ronald Cross' suggestions are good places to start, assuming you have access to another Mac to do the testing. There may be a few other things to try (resetting the PMU, resetting nvram in single-user mode, and clearing the paramater RAM at startup) all -might- revive the drive, but not if the problem lies in the hardware itself.

Joe VanZandt

sometimes swapping the FW cable ends fixes a lot of problems.
also what does system profiler say about the FW, does it exist??

Still won't mount.
 

I tried to mount my external hard drive on another computer and it will not work. I've tried multiple firewire and usb cables. It's a firewire/USB hard drive and the USB won't even come through. So it looks like it's my external hard drive. I just find it strange that it worked just fine last week right before my computer hard drive died and now it won't mount. Any other ideas on how to get it to mount since it appears it's the drive itself and not my computer? Anything would be helpful since I have 300+ gigs of info on this drive that I really don't want to lose. Thanks!

Does the drive appear in the System Profiler (Apple Menu->About this Mac->More Info…) or in Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities)?

If it's still under warranty, call the manufacturer for advice. Maybe they have some tricks up their sleeves. In fact, call them even if it's not under warranty.

I'm just curious, exactly what did Apple fix?

When I connect the hard drive to my computer with the USB cable it does show up in the system profiler, but does not show up in the disk utility. Here is what apple fixed according to the repair order. 1) Hard Drive, 80 GB, 2.5, 4200 2) Hardware Repair-Level 2

I contacted Maxtor/Seagate and they pretty much just told me to call their back up recovery office, which apparently costs a bunch of $$$$ if they actually try to recover anything. My hard drive is still under warranty through December of next year. I have had this hard drive for only a few months, so it surprises me if this hard drive is really out of commission. Hopefully not. Thanks again for all the tips and advice.

How does it appear in Disk Utility? Have you tried "Repair Disk" from there?

It doesn't show up in disk utility, just the system profiler with the following information:

1394 Storage Front Panel*:

Manufacturer: Maxtor
Model: 0x7208
GUID: 0x10B92100AA0982
Maximum Speed: Up to 800 Mb/sec
Connection Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec
Sub-units:
1394 Storage Front Panel* Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0xCEB001
Unit Spec ID: 0x10B9
OneTouch III Unit:
Unit Software Version: 0x10483
Unit Spec ID: 0x609E
Firmware Revision: 0x30308
Product Revision Level: 0338
Sub-units:
OneTouch III SBP-LUN:

The weirdest thing just happened. After leaving my external hard drive on for several minutes it is now showing up in my disk utility but it won't allow me to fix or repair anything. All of those options are just subdues in gray. This is getting frustrating.

So the computer is only seeing the Firewire Bridge and not the drive within. Have you tested the drive on another computer? Have you tried looking at it with TechTool Pro, DiskWarrior or even a Mac OS Install DVD?

This is what it says:

Disk Description : Maxtor Total Capacity : 698.6 GB
Connection Bus : FireWire Write Status : Read/Write
Connection Type : External S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported
Connection ID : 4707151023573378 Partition Scheme : Unformatted

I haven't used any of those programs. What do I need to do?

Personally, I highly recommend DiskWarrior. It will save you more than once and pay for itself rapidly. To use DiskWarrior, just boot the CD with the problem drive attached. It should see it even in its problem state. Click the Rebuild button and let the program do its magic.

Good luck!

I'll get Tech Tool Pro and see what I can do. Anything specific I need to to do? Thanks!

Nevermind, Disk Warrior it is. Thanks for your help Las_Vegas. I really appreciate it.

I got Disk Warrior and the external hard drive does not show up in the directory. Looks like I've hit a dead end.

Did Apple restore what was on your previous internal hard disk when they installed the new internal disk?

It seems highly unlikely (i.e. extremely unusual) but is it possible that you needed to install some software (i.e. driver) on your Mac before you could use this external disk the first time?

Yes, Apple was able to save everything off my old hard drive and transfer it to the new hard drive. Everything was still on my computer when I got it back, although there were several programs I had to do software updates for as they were outdated, i.e. itunes 4.9, quicktime, etc. I agree, it seems highly unlikely that my hard drive just decided to up and die all of the sudden once I got my laptop back.

I contacted Maxtor/Seagate today and they said that that hard drive is most likely shot. I can't think of anything else to do so it looks like I will have to start from scratch when I get the new hard drive. I haven't tried connecting it to a PC computer yet, so I will give that a try and if it doesn't work I'll just send it back and get a new one. If anyone else has any other ideas before I completely give up I am willing to try whatever. Once again, thanks for all of your help.

Hmmm! When I sent my MacBook Pro to have a faulty fan replaced, they took the liberty to completely erase my hard disk! I guess the tech was too lazy to look at the password I supplied him.

I have heard that usually when you send in a Mac for repair, you sign a form saying that you agree that it is okay for the drive to be erased. I think if you want them to preserve your data, they might charge you for this service - it isn't covered under the warranty.

Oh! I knew that! I just couldn't understand why they thought it was necessary to erase the drive to replace a fan!

They might have accidentally damaged the hard drive while doing the repair.

I'd try a software update on your host computer to the next version - OS10.3.4 to OS10.3.8 for instance. That would install drivers and Firewire/USB extensions which will enable your iBook to "see" the external drive. The repair centre probably would have cloned your old HD to your new HD using CCC or something similar and sometimes it doesn't always copy everything exactly as it should ( my experience on a few desktops and powerbooks anyway )
The other thing you could do is just leave the external HD plugged into your computer for as few days and reboot twice a day. More than once has a peripheral magically appeared after a while.
Stewie