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G-Tech drives won’t mount on work computer, but will on home computer
I have an issue with some G-tech drives that I have used for years. I went to plug in a drive today (Mac Pro, Leopard, firewire 800) that I used maybe three months ago and it would not mount. I could see it in the disk utility but the summary said that the drive was unformatted and had 0 bytes capacity. I could not repair, format or do anything else with the drive. I then tried three other G-tech drives, all with the same results. I even swapped which firewire port I was plugging it into to rule out a bad port issue. I plugged in a WD drive (via USB) and it mounted just fine and so did flash drives, etc.
I took one of the G-Tech drives home with me and tested it on my Mac Pro at home and the drive popped right up with all the files still on it.
Does anyone have any ideas re: how to get my work computer to start seeing these drives again? We did some spring cleaning on the drives and the computer about three months ago. Any chance we accidentally deleted something that the computer needed to see the drives?
I have spent hours combing through posts about drives that won’t mount, but haven’t seen a situation like mine. -
4 Replies
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Did these drives previously work OK on this same computer?
[Leigh Harrington] “Any chance we accidentally deleted something that the computer needed to see the drives?”
Yes, but assuming you verified the Firewire cable is OK it sounds like there’s more chance that the Firewire chipset on this computer is failing. Try plugging those drives into a different Firewire port on a different work computer and see what happens.
Sounds like you verified the USB port on this computer is OK… if that drive has USB can you use it instead of Firewire?
Eric Newbauer
Studio Network Solutions (SNS)
https://www.studionetworksolutions.com -
You’re using the same cable at work and at home? If not, change cables. If so, change cables anyway. You should also be able to boot from Recovery HD, and see and mount this drive with Disk Utility. If that works you could optionally do a file listing with Terminal which is slightly hidden in a drop down menu, since there isn’t a Finder in this environment. But I’d isolate the OS itself as a contributing factor.
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Okay, so here is an update on this situation. After my post in Sept. I was swamped with projects and put the G-Tech drive issues aside for a while, but now I am back at it.
When I plug the G-Tech drives in they won’t mount on the desktop. If I go to disk utility I can see the top level of the drive, but I can’t run any repair, erase or anything else on the drive because all of the options are grayed out. I took one of the drives home and it mounted fine on that computer (snow leopard). I recently tried plugging three different drives in on a different Mac Pro at work (snow leopard), but none of them will mount there and again all I can see in disk utility is the top level of the drive with the same specs I mentioned above. Any ideas? These drives still have files on them. I will try taking a couple home tonight to see if I can clear one, reformat it and then see if it will mount on work computers. I would appreciate any advice you can give. -
Hi Leigh,
Does the volume (the indented line) show up in Disk Utility, but greyed out as well? If so, it may be a directory issue that DiskWarrior may be able to repair and allow your drives to mount. You may also contact me direct at eugene.gilbert@hgst.com if you like.
Regards,
Gene Gilbert
g-technology.com
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