Aug 01, 2013 I am using the newest MacBook Air, Mac OS X 10.7.3. My external drive is a Samsung M2 Portable 3 Media, 500GB. I might have accidentally disconnected the hard drive without ejecting it first. Now when I run disk utility and click Repair Disk it says: 'Disk utility can't repair this disk.
Symptoms Of A Corrupt Mac Hard Drive
There are a variety of problems that can occur on your Mac that stem from issues with your directory, permissions, or user specific errors. Drive Genius has an excellent hard drive repair tool to help you navigate your way through hard drive issues and fix your hard drive to prevent data loss. There are some common symptoms that you should be aware of that would indicate corruption within a Mac hard drive. If you have experienced any of the following issues, you can run the repair utility within Drive Genius to try and fix the problem with your hard drive:
Note:To run a Repair on your internal startup drive, you will need to boot from a secondary location such as another computer or by creating and using our BootWell utility. Repair in Drive Genius is not available for APFS formatted drives that are encrypted with Apple’s FileVault.
Keeping Your Data Safe And Secure
When dealing with any problems that arise on your computer, it is highly recommended to have a backup of your data prior to using any utility. Time Machine is available on all Apple Mac computers for basic backups, however if you like to have more customization in the files you back up and the time the backup will start, you may be interested in our Data Backup software.
Note:Data Backup Mac is not compatible with macOS 10.13 High Sierra at this time.
Data Backup allows you to create multiple backups set to give you more control in the files you want to backup and where you would like to have those backups stored. It also provides more advanced backup scheduling features and notifications.
Note:If you run regular backups but do not have a recent backup of your files, it is best to create a new backup to a separate external drive you have not used before. When your computer shows signs of corruption, you would not want to overwrite a previous backup with corrupted data by backing up to your original backup drive.
What Causes Drive Corruption?
Be aware and take note of these factors that can cause hard drive corruption on your computer. Any problems affecting your hard drive can result in data being lost or damaged. The longer you wait to run repairs, the less likely drive utility software will be able to fix your hard drive.
Some common causes of corrupted drives result from power related issues, such as power outages, hardware problems dealing with the hard drive or the RAM on your computer, and manually shutting down the computer if it is not responding. Malware can also affect your hard drive drastically, causing corruption and damaging data.
These factors can also affect external drives connected to your computer. Any drive that is connected externally is at risk for corruption. Manually disconnecting an external drive without ejecting the drive entirely will likely cause file corruption and damage to the hard drive. Using a disk utility software such as Drive Genius gives you the tools needed to monitor and repair problems with your hard drive.
Block Inconsistency Or Corruption Errors
Have you experienced any problematic factors resulting in hard drive corruption? The Drive Genius DrivePulse tool is an excellent way to properly detect this issue and has the hard drive repair utility available to fix the problem.
Whenever there is corruption on a given drive, DrivePulse will report an error. Corruption issues can be reported as a block inconsistency problem, runtime error or invalid block count. Drive Genius will then instruct you to run a Repair on the drive to fix this issue.
I can recall speaking with customers regarding the DrivePulse feature and the warnings that they had received. They were glad that DrivePulse warns of potential issues it noticed after scanning your hard drive, so they can take the necessary steps to resolve them. I had guided them through the process of running the Repair utility with most of them having successful results.
Repairing A Corrupt Mac Hard Drive
Drive Genius can successfully repair the drive, but occasionally the repair can fail. The Repair utility will fail if the drive is suffering from a significant amount of corruption. When Repair fails on the drive, I recommend backing up the drive if you have not already, and reformatting the drive with either Drive Genius or Disk Utility. I would also recommend running the Physical Check with Drive Genius to check integrity of the drive before continuing use.
It is also possible that the drive is physically failing if the Repair utility fails. The Repair utility will not be able to fix any physical issues on your drive, however using the Physical Check utility in Drive Genius may detect hardware issues associated with your drive. If you find your drive is physically failing and need to recover your files, I would recommend contacting our sister company, The Data Rescue Center, to service the drive and recover the data.
DrivePulse will automatically run a physical check to check for physical damage on the hard drives connected to the computer. This test is scheduled to run once a month and will warn you of potential physical issues a hard drive is having. If you have received a DrivePulse error referring to the physical state of your hard drive, I would recommend contacting support to diagnose the issue.
Fix Permissions With Drive Genius
If you are using a Mac operating system of macOS 10.10.5 or below, you may run into an issue with the permissions of your hard drive. Fix Permissions repairs incorrect file and folder ownership and permissions on startup drives according to Apple specifications. Permission issues can result from bad application installers and lead to applications either failing to open or randomly crashing. If you are experiencing these symptoms, Fix Permissions may be able to resolve them.
You will see Fix Permissions located under the Protect utilities in Drive Genius. If you are operating above macOS Yosemite, your operating system now automatically repairs file permissions during software installations, updates, or changes. The Fix Permissions button utility will not be displayed if you are on a version of Mac OS that does not require manual permission repairs.
Your Hard Drive’s Personal Doctor![]()
Drive Genius has a great drive monitoring tool called DrivePulse, which will run diagnostics on your drive while you are not using it. DrivePulse is automatically activated when Drive Genius is installed and will monitor your hard drive daily, only running scans when that particular device has been idle for 5 minutes.
DrivePulse will scan for physical problems (bad blocks) on the disk once a week, which takes about an hour to complete and it will pause the scan if the computer becomes active before the scan has finished. If at any time during the scanning process, you come back and start using the computer again, the scan will pause and wait until you’re not using your computer again to resume.
For computers running time-scheduled applications such as Time Machine, DrivePulse uses heuristics other than inactivity. For instance, if a Time Machine backup is active, or CPU use is high, or an app has put the system in “kiosk” mode, DrivePulse will not run tasks even if the computer is inactive. In addition, DrivePulse will stop all tests when the computer switches to battery power when working on a laptop and will resume the tests when the main power is restored.
DrivePulse also monitors for corrupted preference files which are a common source of misbehaving or crashing applications. DrivePulse automatically verifies both user and system preferences and alerts you of corrupted files so they can be moved to the trash.
macOS requires a minimal amount of free space for all drives, but the startup drive in particular is sensitive to free space. If the drive’s free space is too low, it can lead to lost data, application crashes, or even system crashes. DrivePulse’s “low free space” detection enhances the system’s built-in detection by automatically adjusting for system use (including virtual memory, sleep images, etc) and warning you of low free space before it becomes a true problem.
This tool will also perform a Verify on the volume to assess the integrity of the catalog and directory structure once a day, which takes about 2 minutes to complete. This follows the same rules as scan in that it will ONLY run when your Mac is not being used and will pause if you start working on your Mac again.
For rotational hard drives, DrivePulse will also scan the volume catalog and its files to determine the amount of fragmentation on the volume. This fragmentation scan is scheduled once a week and takes around 10 seconds to complete.
Drive Monitoring Saves You Time and Money
With Drive Genius DrivePulse, you can easily monitor your hard drive for any issues either with corruption, fragmentation, or physical problems. Using this disk utility software can save you more time, since DrivePulse will keep you updated on the state of your hard drive. Drive Genius even has a hard drive repair utility to fix issues shown with DrivePulse.
Data recovery can be expensive, but can also be avoided by taking the precautionary measures to repair or replace your hard drive when problems arise. Save money in the long run by keeping regular backups of your important data, as well as monitoring those drives with disk utility such as Drive Genius.
About the Author
My name is Matt and I work alongside the technical support team at Prosoft Engineering to provide friendly customer support for anyone using our software. I am also a customer service representative for their sister company, The Data Rescue Center. I enjoy helping others and strive to inform users on how to keep their files safe and maintain performance for their computer.
Jun 23, 2020 • Filed to: Answer Hard Drive Problems • Proven solutions
Seagate external hard drive not showing up and detected in my windows 10 computer
There are several times when our system works in a strange manner, making us wonder about the consequences, the major of them being data loss. To overcome this issue, the hard drive was widely used by people for backing up their data in a secure place. However, the hard drive is an electronic device itself is prone to physical compromise that may result in data loss that might be impossible to recover until you search for ways to do so.
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This question can puzzle you. But here, you can get the answer. This article will walk you through how to recover data from an external hard drive and repair external hard drive not working.
Part 1 How to Repair External Hard Disk Not Detected?
If your external hard drive isn't recognized, you can take the following different solutions and steps to get the external hard disk error fixed.
Way 1 Check IDE / SATA to USB Connection:Repair External Hard Drive Mac Software Free
If the external hard disk enclosure is not the issue, you need to dig further to find out the culprit by following up on another series of steps.
Way 2 Check the sound the hard drive is making:
Listen up to the sound that your connected hard drive is making. Are you able to hear it? If it is spinning you'll possibly know the sound.
If your drive is spinning but the system doesn't recognize your hard drive, follow the next series of steps to manually check the settings on your computer.
Repair External Hard Drive Mac Software DownloadWay 3 Enter into BIOS:
Press the trigger key that could be [DEL], [ESC], [F2], [F10] or [F12], depending upon your system. Check out the list of the types of devices that are connected with your system. You can fetch this information under the BOOT menu or Advance menu of the system.
On Windows: If you are working on windows, here are the steps to check the devices connected:
Way 4 Fix external hard drive by formatting
You can also directly use the diskpart.exe to repair external hard drive not detected. Here are the steps:
Free knitting pattern software. Notes: 0 means the drive letter of the external hard disk to be repaired. It can be also 1 or 2.
As we can see, to learn how to repair an external hard drive is handy as it helps in avoiding unprecedented circumstances about your data. For the ones keen to repair an external hard drive, we have multiple options, each catering to different issues and users. Therefore, you no longer need to worry if your Seagate or WD external hard drive not recognized.
Part 2 How to Recover Files from External Hard Drive Without Formatting1. Recover External Hard Drive with Recoverit
A corrupted external hard drive can always bring about data loss, even if sometimes you repair it successfully. If you lost data on your external hard drive, unfortunately, don't worry! You still have the chance to get lost data back. To recover files from external hard drive, you can have a try Recoverit Data Recovery.
This external hard drive recovery software can help you recover data from an external hard drive no matter it is corrupted, dead, crashed, damaged, or not detected. Before external hard drive data recovery, Recoverit also allows you to preview the scanned files to make a selective recovery.
2. Watch the Video for External Hard Drive Recovery
This video can instruct you how to recover files from external hard drive without formatting. Just take one minute, and you can get the surefire way to retrieve data from hard disk on Windows or Mac.
3. How to Retrieve Data from External Hard Drive
To start external hard drive recovery, you should firstly get Recoverit Data Recovery free downloaded and installed on your computer. After the installation, connect the external hard drive to your Windows computer and then follow the next steps to regain the lost data from an external hard drive.
Mac users can download the Mac version of Recoverit Data Recovery and turn to this page: How to Recover Files from External Hard Drive on Mac.
Step 1. Select external hard drive
Among all the hard drives which have been shown on the screen, please select the corrupted external hard drive and click the “Start” button to move forward.
Note: Please ensure that the selected external hard drive has been connected and can be recognized by the computer.
Step 2. Scan the external hard drive
Recoverit will start a quick scan on the undetected external hard drive. If the quick scan can't help you get the lost data, turn to the “All-around Recovery” mode. It can search for more files for you on the external disk.
Step 3. Recover data from external hard drive
Once the scan finishes, you can preview all the found data, select the wanted ones, and click “Recover” to restore the files from the external disk.
Seagate external hard drive still not working? How to fix Seagate external hard drive?
Part 3 How to Fix External Hard Drive with Error Messages?
While using your external hard drive, there has been observed an error message, which asks the user to format the hard drive. In these cases, it is recommended not to follow the instructions blindly and do some researches on your own. Some of the error messages are:
While accessing the file:
While attempting to run chkdsk:
Commonly, a user will not able to understand what a RAW file system means, therefore, they may follow the critical step of formatting the data to solve the issue. However, if you understand the requirements of the system, you might solve without the loss of any data. A RAW file system is a file that the Windows cannot recognize. As a result, available drivers could not mount the file system to a drive. Maybe, the filesystem type or location on the disk is corrupted. When the Windows are unable to find these files, it prompts the user to format the data.
Wonder how to recover files from the RAW file system? This page can be your reference: How to Recover Data from RAW SD Card.
This usually happens because many users disconnect their hard drives without choosing the 'Safely Remove Hardware?' option. Here is a way to fix this issue without formatting your hard drive.
1. Use CMD for external hard disk check
Generally speaking, the external hard drive errors can be repaired using CMD. What you should note is that regarding 'chkdsk f: /f ', the first f should be replaced with the drive letter of the external hard drive.
2. Access S.M.A.R.T Data
If there is any physical damage to your hard disk, S.M.A.R.T Data will help you quickly figure out the problems that are being faced. S.M.A.R.T stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology and is used to alert the impending failure of the drive. This technology gives the user a deadline that they require to save the data.
Functions of S.M.A.R.T:
If at any point in time, your hard drive reports that S.M.A.R.T health is not able to access the search or in anyways, FAILED, the primary step one must take is to save the data immediately as the drive is of no longer use.
3. Youtube Video Tutorial on How to Repair External Hard Drive
Follow these steps if you are wondering how to fix the external hard drive. However, if your problem is still not solved, there are chances that the PCB of your external hard drive is damaged. There are ways to replace your hard drive's PCB, but for your record, these methods are not recommended as they may cause further damage to the device.
Closing Words
Before looking for professional repairs, it is recommended that you repair the external hard drive on your own. And his detailed external hard drive repair tutorial must help you, which is aimed at smoothing the way for you to fix a corrupted external hard drive. Another advice is that you should take good care of the data stored on it during or after external hard drive repair. If unfortunately, you find them lost, please turn to Recoverit Data Recovery in less than no time so that you can promptly recover data from external hard drive not detected or not working.
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