Firewire drive not mounting

Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I have a VST 20gb firewire drive (bus powered) that I purchased about six months ago and recently it stopped mounting. It shows up in the Apple system profiler but it never mounts. I rarely use this drive so I don't think the drive is broken (although I can't be sure of that.) It happened all of a sudden. I was copying my itunes folder to the drive and it just slowed down to a halt in the middle of copying the folder (3gb folder.) I've tried zapping the pram but that didn't work. I've tried different cables and that didn't work either. It doesn't show up in the Apple disk utility either. I know its under warranty but I live in Iceland and it might be a bit of a pain to ship it back to the States (where I bought it.) I'm not sure I can find the receipt as well.

Any Ideas?

Thanks in advance.



Powerbook G4 667mhz DVI, 768mb ram, 10.2.5

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    skalmanskalman Posts: 42member
    Hi,



    I would say that this HD is broken. ASP just shows that the port is working and that the system can read from the card in the drive. Try to boot from the 9 cd and see if the HD shows up from Diskutil. If it doesn't work try to reset the NVRAM and then try booting from the cd again. If you are able to get a powersupply for the drive it is possible that it would work again if the power from the FW port all of a sudden went down.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    vikingviking Posts: 127member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Skalman

    Hi,



    I would say that this HD is broken. ASP just shows that the port is working and that the system can read from the card in the drive. Try to boot from the 9 cd and see if the HD shows up from Diskutil. If it doesn't work try to reset the NVRAM and then try booting from the cd again. If you are able to get a powersupply for the drive it is possible that it would work again if the power from the FW port all of a sudden went down.




    I tried both suggestions and neither one worked. When I installed the 9 cd and ran disk utility, It just froze up and I had to restart. Resetting the nvram also did not help. The one thing that is different though is now I get a warning that the disk "failed authentication" and "could not be read." But I only get this warning when I unplug the drive after It doesn't mount. It gives me the option to initialize it or eject it. But neither one will work because when I plug it back in the warnings and options go away.

    I guess it is broken, although it seems weird since I rarely use it and its practically brand new. Thanks for your help.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    if it's asking you to initialize or eject it, something crapped out on it last time it was writing. the drive needs to be reformatted. if you can get that option again, initialize it and it should work just fine. (assuming it can still spin up)
  • Reply 4 of 5
    vikingviking Posts: 127member
    Unfortunately, I only get the option to initialize the drive once I disconnect it. It doesn't show up at all if I leave it plugged in. If I plug it again, the option to initialize it goes away unless I unplug it again. Weird thing is I can hear the drive working for about a minute every time I plug it in so it sounds like its trying. If I ever get this drive working again I'm going to rename it "thelittleenginethatcould."
  • Reply 5 of 5
    vikingviking Posts: 127member
    update: I got the option to initialize it to stay open somehow with the drive in, but whe I click on "open disk utility"; the drive cannot be recognized. It does not show up at all. In fact there are no drives there until I unlug it.

    Thought I had it. Damn.
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