My WD external drive unmounted itself and now does not work

ejecthard drivemountrepair

I have a strange problem. Working on an OS 10.9.5 MacBook laptop.

Last night, I was exporting a 20-something GB Aperture library from my WD 2TB drive to another hard drive. I left, and when I came back the next morning, my computer warned me that I should properly eject my hard drive. I hadn't disconnected it, and my settings are set so that the computer will NEVER go to sleep or shut down when the power supply was connected (which it was). Now, my mac won't recognize the hard drive.

Is it dead?
How can I prevent this from happening again?
How can I recover my files if I can't see the disk???

I've tried:

Powering my computer on and off
Using a different USB connector
Using a different power cord
Plugging the external drive into another mac (did not work)
Plugging the drive into a windows computer (nope)
Mounting through disk utility, or using disk utility to repair/verify the disk (got this 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).
Suggestions on these sites: External drive does not mount after plug off without eject and Sometimes Mac doesn't recognise my external hard drive e.g., going through terminal to unmount OR eject OR view files in read only mode (all just say the volume timed out)
Read suggestions on this thread about drives disconnecting on their own – wasn't sure what to do, but realized the problem might have had something to do with exporting Aperture files? https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2597920?start=120&tstart=0

This is my time machine disk, and it has some other stuff on it I need. I also don't know whether to trust my machine to plug another hard drive into it. I can't update to a newer OS just yet. I'm terrified to plug in my other hard drives because what if the same thing happens to them!? Unfortunately all my Aperture libraries are stored on external disks!

Info:

Last login: Sun Mar 26 16:39:26 on ttys000
ericaneomputer2:~ erica$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *320.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            319.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS NEWTON_WD               2.0 TB     disk1s2
ericaneomputer2:~ erica$ diskutil info disk1
   Device Identifier:        disk1
   Device Node:              /dev/disk1
   Part of Whole:            disk1
   Device / Media Name:      WD My Book 1140 Media

   Volume Name:              Not applicable (no file system)

   Mounted:                  Not applicable (no file system)

   File System:              None

   Content (IOContent):      GUID_partition_scheme
   OS Can Be Installed:      No
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 USB
   SMART Status:             Not Supported

   Total Size:               2.0 TB (2000365289472 Bytes) (exactly 3906963456 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Free Space:        Not applicable (no file system)
   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

   Read-Only Media:          No
   Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (no file system)
   Ejectable:                Yes

   Whole:                    Yes
   Internal:                 No
   OS 9 Drivers:             No
   Low Level Format:         Not supported

Best Answer

Either your WD MyBook enclosure has failed or the disk itself has failed.

I am basing this assessment on two factors:

Points 4 & 5 above - that plugging it into different computers didn't work. If it doesn't work on different computers you have narrowed it down the the WD unit itself. If the problem was with your Mac, it wouldn't be present on a different computer.
The correct response provided by diskutil for disk1. It's highly unlikely (though not impossible), that if the enclosure wasn't functioning you would at least get erroneous information back or no information at all. The WD enclosure is reporting back that there is a drive but it has no operating system. Chances are, it's the drive.

However, you can take it a step further and do some additional diagnostics. The key here is to isolate the major individual components of the WD enclosure - the logic board and the drive itself.

So, to diagnose this you will need either of the following

a known working hard drive
a 3.5" HDD to USB adapter (I recommend this option for reasons that will become clear momentarily).

You will need to disassemble the MyBook. From my research, the case appears to be held in place with "snaps" which you just pry off so it shouldn't be too difficult to get into. There's a straightforward set of instructions on Instructables.com

Depending on the option you took above - you either need to change the drive in the MyBook or plug the old drive into the USB to SATA adapter.

If one component works (i.e the drive), then you know for a fact that the other (i.e. the enclosure) has failed; or vice versa.

If it is your drive, the USB to SATA adapter will allow you to attempt to recover your files. I have personally used Disk Drill with excellent results (it's free to use the diagnostic portion and to see if you can recover data). You will be able to make an image of the drive and attempt recovery on the image lessening the chance of total failure of the drive.

If it happens to be the enclosure, the USB to SATA adapter will allow you to continue to use the disk drive while you come up with a more permanent solution (the MyBook is essentially the same thing but with a more elegant enclosure).

If you choose the "drive method" you will still be able to get the same diagnostic results, except you won't be able to transfer or rescue any data if it happens to be the MyBook enclosure that's bad.

Now, as preventing it from happening again - well, this is a spinning hard drive which means it mechanical. It's going to fail. The only thing you can do is mitigate data loss by having a backup

Related Solutions

Have /Volumes/Storage Drive

Chances are, it's just a folder created randomly by some app or another at some point to use as a mount point and it was never deleted. It should be perfectly safe to rm -rf it, especially if it is empty.

Note: If you rm -rf in /Volumes, make sure you specify which directory to operate on (i.e. DON'T JUST rm -rf /Volumes!) otherwise you will delete everything on every mounted disk, including your root drive (granted, it will throw permissions errors before doing anything to your OS first but still). Try to delete things in Finder if you’re not sure of your rm skills or if you don’t have a backup or time now to restore from that backup.

I think I messed up the Fusion Drive on the 1TB iMac (with BootCamp)

Theoretically everything is fine with your Fusion Drive. Fusion Drives look like this. Disk0 is your SSD with 121 GB and disk1 is your HDD with ~1 TB (~1.121 TB summed up).

The larger parts of your SSD (disk0s2) and your HDD (disk1s2) are pooled to a CoreStorage LVG (Fusion Drive: disk3) with a size of 967.8 GB. The rest is reserved for EFIs, a Recovery HD (alltogether ~1.3 GB) and your old Windows partition - now probably free space (~152 GB).

The logical volume 'Macintosh HD' (967.8 GB) spans disk0s2 and disk1s2. This is the first 'Macintosh HD' in picture 1. The volume 'Macintosh HD' - it's the one visible on the desktop - should ideally also have about 967.8 GB. This is the second 'Macintosh HD' in picture 1.
In fact it has only 852.67 GB (see picture 3).

In the second picture the logical volume 'Macintosh HD' is the first listed in black, the volume 'Macintosh HD' is the second listed in black, the other two 'Macintosh HD's listed in grey are the parts of your SSD and HDD dedicated to the logical volume 'Macintosh HD'.

In my opinion something went wrong after deleting various partitions with the Bootcamp Assistant/Disk Utility or in Windows.

Preparation:

Detach any external drive (especially your external Time Machine backup drive)
Restart to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing alt cmd R at startup.
The prerequisites are the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot into a recovery netboot image which usually is loaded from an apple/akamai server.

I recommend ethernet because it's more reliable. If you are restricted to WIFI and the boot process fails, just restart your Mac until you succeed booting.

Alternatively you may start from a bootable installer thumb drive (preferably Mavericks or Yosemite) or a thumb drive containing a full system (preferably Mavericks or Yosemite).

Now you may either repair CoreStorage or rebuild your Fusion Drive:

'Repair CoreStorage' (not recommended):

First i would try to check the volume 'Macintosh HD' with Disk Utility. If the volume is corrupted consider a reinstall of Mac OS X.
If the volume is ok quit Disk Utility
Open Terminal and enter diskutil unmountDisk /dev/LVIdentifier and both diskutil unmountDisk /dev/DiskContainingApple_CoreStorageIdentifier
In your case: first diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk3 then diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk0 and diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
remove the EFI NO NAME partition with gpt remove -i IndexNumberOfEFINoName DiskIdentifier:
gpt remove -i 4 disk1
Remount the CoreStorage disks and then the Logical Volume:
In your case: first diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk0 and diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk1 and then diskutil mount /dev/disk3.

enter gpt -r -vvv show /dev/diskIdentfierOfApple_CoreStorage to get infos of your HDD CoreStorage disk.
In your case: gpt -r -vvv show /dev/disk1
It should look like this:

-bash-3.2# gpt -r -vvv show /dev/disk1
gpt show: /dev/disk1: mediasize=1000204886016; sectorsize=512;         blocks=1953525168
gpt show: /dev/disk1: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, start=40, size=409600
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=409640, size=1671210848
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=1671620488, size=1269760
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Sec GPT at sector 1953525167                               
     start          size  index contents                                        
         0             1        PMBR                                            
         1             1        Pri GPT header                                  
         2            32        Pri GPT table                                   
        34             6
        40        409600      1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
    409640    1671210848      2 GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1671620488       1269760      3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1672890248     280634887
1953525135            32        Sec GPT table
1953525167             1        Sec GPT header

The free space on your HDD has 280634887 blocks. Please calculate the biggest block number dividable through 8. That's 280634880 blocks (á 512 bytes) which equals 143685058560 B or ~143.7 GB. Add the size of your HDD CoreStorage Physical Volume (852666400768 B) The result is 143685058560 B + 852666400768 B = 996351459328 B
Resize your HDD CoreStorage physical volume with diskutil cs resizeDisk HDDPVUUID newsize
In your case: diskutil cs resizeDisk 93892BE8-2B7F-4ABD-A4C3-984495DCD98D 996351459328b
Calculate the maximal size of your CoreStorage Logical Volume in diskutil cs list: (size disk0s2) + (size disk1s2) In your case that's 120988852224 B + 996351459328 B = 1117340311552 B. That should be the size of your refreshed Logical Volume Group.
Resize your Logical Volume with diskutil cs resizeVolume LVUUID LVGSize-128 MB In your case that's diskutil cs resizeVolume D237FFDC-7DA4-41D7-AC13-4CC7E5E8C0A0 1117212311552b. If you get an error (There is not enough free space...) choose a smaller size like 1117148311552b.
Quit Terminal and open Disk Utility.
Check your expanded CoreStorage Volume for errors.
Quit Disk Utility, choose your CS volume as startup disk and restart your Mac

'Rebuild Fusion Drive' (recommended if you have a Time Machine backup)

Booted to Internet Recovery Mode open Utilities → Terminal in the menubar and enter:
diskutil cs list to get the CoreStorage listing.
Copy the Logical Volume UUID, it's the fifth listed.
Now delete the Logical Volume with diskutil cs deleteVolume LVUUID.
In your case: diskutil cs deleteVolume D237FFDC-7DA4-41D7-AC13-4CC7E5E8C0A0.
Copy the Logical Volume Group UUID, it's the first listed in the listing of diskutil cs list.
Then delete the Logical Volume Group with diskutil cs delete LVGUUID.
In your case: diskutil cs delete 1EFE58BC-3613-44C4-86EE-D816F3B66E3E
Enter exit and quit 'Terminal'
Open 'Disk Utility'. Enter 'Ignore' if you are asked to fix the drives.
Choose your SSD and partition it: 1 Partition Mac OS X Extended (Journaled), hit the Options button and choose GUID Partiton table and hit OK and Apply.
Please check that the size is ~121 GB

Example:
Choose your HDD and partition it: 1 Partition Mac OS X Extended (Journaled), hit the Options button and choose GUID Partiton table and hit OK and Apply.
Please check that the size is ~1 TB

Example:
Quit Disk Utility and open Terminal
Enter diskutil list

Example (your disk identifiers and sizes are different of course: Your volume SSD probably has the Identifier disk0s2 and the size 121 GB and your volume HDD probably has the Identifier disk1s2 and the size 1.0 TB):
Enter diskutil cs create "Name" IdentifierSSD IdentifierHDD
In your case probably diskutil cs create "Macintosh HD" disk0s2 disk1s2.

Copy the resulting LVGUUID

Example:
Enter diskutil cs CreateVolume LVGUUID jhfs+ "Macintosh HD" 100%.

Example:
Enter diskutil cs list
Check the size of your Logical Volume. It should have the size ~1.121 TB

Example:
Quit Terminal
Open 'Disk Utility' and check your newly created volume for errors
Quit 'Disk Utility'
Attach your external Time Machine backup drive or check this answer if you use NAS or another network share.
Open 'Restore from Time Machine Backup'
Choose the appropriate Time Machine backup and restore your system
Reboot to your restored system.
Unmount and detach your Time Machine backup drive
Open 'Terminal' and enter 'diskutil list'
Check if your 'Recovery HD' is listed.
If your 'Recovery HD' is missing, usually reinstalling your current system with the latest available system installer (e.g. 'Install OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)' if Mavericks is currently installed) will recreate it without loosing any data. AFAIK Recovery Partition Creator 3.8 will NOT create a Recovery HD on CoreStorage volumes.
After reinstalling the system with the latest available system installer open App Store and install the latest security fixes.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Have /Volumes/Storage Drive

I think I messed up the Fusion Drive on the 1TB iMac (with BootCamp)

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