HD not recognized

[LBob]

I just updated my OS to El Capitan and now my Mac Mini won't recognize my HD. When I boot I get a message that says that it is unreadable. It's a Seagate portable which I use as a back up. When I go to disc utilities, it can find it and I ran first aid on it, but the option to mount the disc is grayed out. Only the "erase" option shows up. I would be very grateful to anyone who can help me fix this without going through the hassle of erasing the HD and re-backing up all my music files.

[tmtomh]

Apologies if this is a dumb question, but have you tried restarting your mini, with the external drive attached? El Capitan has some documented issues with external USB hard drives - and I've even experienced something similar with an internal drive. At any rate, it's always cured by a restart in my experience.

[LBob]

Apologies if this is a dumb question, but have you tried restarting your mini, with the external drive attached? El Capitan has some documented issues with external USB hard drives - and I've even experienced something similar with an internal drive. At any rate, it's always cured by a restart in my experience.

 

Not a dumb question, the obvious solution is often overlooked. Yeah I restarted. No joy. Wish it was that easy.

[wgscott]

Is it encrypted? I've had a real hard time getting encrypted USB drives to unlock on El Crapitan. Disk utility offers an "unlock" option in the menu that eventually worked for me, but it is exceedingly buggy.

[CR250]

Probably the easiest fix would be to plug the HD into a different computer and back up your files. Then let your Mac erase/format it to whatever makes it happy, and put your music back on it. Actually, if that's your only copy, it would be a good idea to get another HD for backup anyway.

 

I haven't used a Mac in a while, but you also may want to check what filesystem is on your external HD. If your new OS doesn't support it stock, it would be a simple upgrade.

[LBob]

Is it encrypted? I've had a real hard time getting encrypted USB drives to unlock on El Crapitan. Disk utility offers an "unlock" option in the menu that eventually worked for me, but it is exceedingly buggy.

 

No encryption. Not nearly that sophisticated.

[LBob]

I looked on the web for problems and it looks like Mac doesn't support writing to NTFS HDs. I think my Seagate might be NTFS?

[LBob]

Probably the easiest fix would be to plug the HD into a different computer and back up your files. Then let your Mac erase/format it to whatever makes it happy, and put your music back on it. Actually, if that's your only copy, it would be a good idea to get another HD for backup anyway.

 

I haven't used a Mac in a while, but you also may want to check what filesystem is on your external HD. If your new OS doesn't support it stock, it would be a simple upgrade.

 

Tried it on a different computer with the same result. I wouldn't recognize the HD. Starting to think strongly about cloud back up now...

[baddog]

Unless you install a 3rd party utility it can only read NTFS volumes.

 

If you can mount the drive on your desktop, highlight it, choose Get Info (command-i) and you will see the format of the drive.

 

Were you able to read/write to this drive prior to upgrading to El Capitan on your Mac Mini?

[wgscott]

Yeah, it would be if you haven't reformatted it.

 

You might be able to enable it: How to Enable NTFS Write Support in Mac OS X | OSXDaily

 

(I've never tried.)

[CR250]

"Tried it on a different computer with the same result. I wouldn't recognize the HD. Starting to think strongly about cloud back up now..."

 

If you have access to a PC, you may want to download a Linux distro that can be run live from a CD/DVD. Any one of the Mints would be a good choice. Providing the HD is not damaged in some way, you shouldn't have any trouble getting to your music and making a backup. After doing that, have your Mac format the drive to whatever file system it uses, and put your music back on it.

[wgscott]

OS X should be able to read the files (and you can therefore copy them from the drive). It just can't write to NTFS.

 

OS X uses HFS+ BTW.

[LBob]

Unless you install a 3rd party utility it can only read NTFS volumes.

 

If you can mount the drive on your desktop, highlight it, choose Get Info (command-i) and you will see the format of the drive.

 

Were you able to read/write to this drive prior to upgrading to El Capitan on your Mac Mini?

 

Yes. I could read and write to the drive. It was my back up for a year or so. It worked perfectly till the El Capitan install.

 

I tried to reinstall it but Disk Utility wouldn't give me that option. All I can do is erase it.

[wwaldmanfan]

I just updated my OS to El Capitan and now my Mac Mini won't recognize my HD. When I boot I get a message that says that it is unreadable. It's a Seagate portable which I use as a back up. When I go to disc utilities, it can find it and I ran first aid on it, but the option to mount the disc is grayed out. Only the "erase" option shows up. I would be very grateful to anyone who can help me fix this without going through the hassle of erasing the HD and re-backing up all my music files.

 

You should always make a bootable backup of your computer to external media before upgrading the OSX (as well as having multiple backups of your music library). This way if it does not run properly, you can revert it back to the tried-and-true version. This advice comes from 20+ years of experience with Macs and other computers. Hope you can work things out.

[LBob]

After checking the system report, I think the problem might be that the OS thinks the drive isn't initialized for some reason. In system report it comes up as uninitialized.

[tmtomh]

If it worked fine prior to El Capitan, then it can't be the drive's formatting. If the drive is Mac-formatted (HFS+ aka "Mac OS Extended"), then a Windows PC won't be able to read it even if the drive is fine (unless you have a 3rd party HFS+ driver/app installed on the Windows PC, which I assume you don't).

 

If El Capitan thinks the drive is not initialized, then it could be that the file system on the drive has gotten corrupted, or that the drive simply is dying.

[CR250]

Unless your HD was labeled for Mac use only the file system should be fat32, or possibly ntfs. El Capitan is known to have issues with both of them. I really don't think anything is wrong with the drive. If you plug it into a Windows or Linux PC it will probably work normally.

 

While it is possible that the HD is failing, doing so at the exact time the OS was upgraded to a version with known problems, seems very unlikely. I still think its a good idea to transfer your music to a different HD and then re-format it with your Mac.

[LBob]

I took the drive to a local computer shop who ministered to it to no avail. Now using a brand new back up HD and contemplating buying a second back up. For 150 bucks vs the time and money involved in the music files that seems a no brainer. Still think El Capitan was involved in this some how, but not enough proof for an indictment. Thanks all for the help.