I have a WD external HDD which is plugged into my MacBook Air more or less all the time; it has two partitions one of which is my Time Machine disk. Just today I noticed that the hard drive is not mounting correctly anymore
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On boot-up, both partitions do not show up in the Finder at all
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When I unplug the drive and replug it back in, only the non-Time Machine partition shows up in Finder. It appears to work like normal i.e. reading and writing (I've already copied all my data off it)
- I can't seem to either eject the disk or unmount the partition that is mountable. If I hit the eject button in Finder, the partition name greys out and is not clickable but does not go away.
Via Disk Utility, I am unable to either mount the Time Machine partition (I get the generic not able to mount partition error message) and I am also unable to run Repair disk on it (error message: 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.). Screenshot below. I tried erasing the disk but that also did not work (error message: Couldn’t unmount disk.)
It sounds like my hard drive has failed (or is in the process of failing) – the only things that I makes me second guess myself and make me wonder if the disk is salvageable are:
- The non-Time Machine partition appears to mount correctly and can be used as usual (although as mentioned above it cannot be unmounted)
- The drive is not that old all: probably about 18 months old. I have drives that are older that are still ticking along nicely.
Is this a simple case of a failed drive (perhaps a defective product) or is this a symptom of a software related problem (e.g. there have been several instances where the drive has been unplugged without being ejected correctly)?
Best Answer
I had the same problem and resolved it like this.