A thread for boring computer questions.

yeah, my suggestion was going to be wipe and repartition. that gives you a working drive unless there's something physical wrong with the drive.

downside of course is you lose your t swift/cocorosie collection. have you tried reading the drive on another mac? do you know if it's a hfs or windows partition (if the latter then try a windows pc too).

it's a windows partition so my ps3 could read it.

i care more about the physical data than the physical drive itself - but how could i even repartition it if it won't mount at all?

if my cocorosie mp3s disappear, caek... i dont know what i'll do

ah good point. if disk utility can't see it then something is up. definitely try another machine.

p.s. let me know once you've got it up and running and i will send you an mp3 of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exm8bKidg4Y

sweet - if i can get some bonus cocorosie mp3s out of this, that would be dope

Can your PS3 read it?

ooohh great question

don't look like it :(

Sounds borked.

:(

Try a different USB cable!

one step ahead of you buddy

:(

(seriously, USB cables can be uppity)
Also try plugging the drive into different USB ports on the Mac. The ext HDD on my PC will only play nice with one particular port.

two steps ahead of you buddy

:(

PC tech in me says the USB->(SATA/IDE) interface has probably croaked but the drive itself is still OK, so crack open the housing and plug the HDD directly into the PC - but you're using a Mac, so are outside of my area of experience.

:(

It does have an SATA (I think that's what it is) port.

Anyone done this with a Mac? Procedure with a PC is to drink coffee and swear a lot.

open the case. inside you will find almost certainly find a hard drive with a regular SATA interface. either find a desktop PC or Mac to connect it to, or find/buy a USB caddy (check size of drive first, most of these will likely do: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=enclosure&x=0&y=0)

sorry mean to link here: http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=92&name=External-Enclosures

Prosoft Data Rescue. Had a drive once where the directory or whatever was so fucked that Disk Warrior wouldn't even mount it to be able to fix it. Data Rescue saw it, let me save all my files, then I wiped the drive clean, reformated, and I'm still using it. And all data was saved, but some of it was in weird places.

s1ocki can you open a terminal and run "diskutil list" with the faulty drive attached and paste the output here?

/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 499.8 GB disk0s2

so basically just my internal

appreesh the efforts btw

prosoft cant seem to see it arrrrgh

this is the weird one i have

http://thydzik.com/how-to-disassemble-a-seagate-freeagent-pro/

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=seagate+freeagent+pro+not+mounting+mac&aq=5v&aqi=g-v2&aql=&oq=seagate+freeagent+pro+not+moun&gs_rfai=

maybe this has something to do with it??

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=213059&NewLang=en

i am getting nowhere

Is the drive making any weird-arse noises?

caek otm, buy another usb enclosure just to check if its the drive or the case

no it's not making any noises, it's very quiet

too quiet!!!

No clicking? No?

Swap enclosure otm btw. If the drive is that quiet it's probably not connected to anything.

it must feel... so... alone

btw I just bought a 2Tb drive for backups as a result of this thread.

ha.

thankfully, my important stuff is largely backed up via a time machine/dropbox double-whammers.

what is considered the most reliable HD brand these days?

I like eastern digital

i mean western eastern is prob some cheap Chinese knokoff

hahah

i like oceangate and faxtor

In the past year I have bought two Seagates, five WDs and three Samsungs. The reason I bought three Samsungs is that every single one of them died prematurely because they are made by the cack-handed goons at Samsung.

here's the thing

the drive lights up when i plug it into the computer, but it makes no sound

that may be bad news but try it in an enclosure or another machine first

it got no love from the ps3... i guess i'll invest in an enclosure. i'll need a new HD anyway so i guess i'll get another internal too so it wont be a total waste of cashish if it doesnt work.

good plansh

yeah if you just need massive storage that need not be particularly portable, an enclosure and a bunch of 3.5" OEM internal drives is a very good way to go.

what do we think of the caviar green line?

should i get a mega-enclosure?

fuck usb2.0 i'm going fw800 this time.

should i get this?

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=54483&vpn=EZQE61302&manufacture=Ezquest

stick 2 1tb drives in it?

will 2tb drives work do you think?

and then do i use it for... time machine? or superduper backup? or just to store my photos/videos off my laptop?

i cant wait till someone figures out a way for me not to have to think about this stuff all the time

if you're looking to spend "mad bank" then a NAS enclosure with 4 drives and RAID is "mad upgradable" and good from a data security POV. that's going to be ~1000 units of currency.

what is a mega-enclosure?

fw800 ftw.

xp

by mega i mean a RAID