Mac Finder: WD My Passport won't mount

Question

I have a WD My Passport 650GB (with Firewire and USB). I'm using it for almost a year now and it always worked fine. While underway I simply plug it in via Firewire - at home I connect it to my Airport Extreme to have it available as a network storage.

Today I connected the HDD to my MacBook Pro (via firewire) and NOTHING. The HDD is starting (clearly making a sound and the power-indicator is flashing) but it won't appear in Finder. I also tried it with USB - no sign.

I ran Disk Utility and tried to repair the disk. At first try I got a red error line saying that something is wrong with the "headers". However the repair completed with a success message saying that everything is OK. I also verified the HDD. Also with a success message. I did that a few times again and unplugged it in between. Never got the error with the headers again - it's always completing and saying everything is OK. However I can't mount the drive.

That is what Disk Utility is showing.

Solution 1

Try mounting the volume at root level with terminal. You may also want to check the integrity/health of the drive with tools such as Drive Genius. I would just do a data rescue on the drive and reformat the it to save time, provided you have the tools and storage to hold your recovered data.

Solution 2

I just debugged a practically identical issue. After hours of trying various stuff, I finally found an answer, after closely examining system.log in Console. I found this:

3.1.13. 21.42.42,090 sudo[622]:    ... : TTY=ttys001 ; PWD=/Users/...; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/sbin/diskutil mount readOnly /dev/disk2s2
3.1.13. 21.42.42,000 kernel[0]: jnl: disk2s2: is_clean: journal magic is bad (0xdead00ab != 0x4a4e4c78)
3.1.13. 21.42.42,000 kernel[0]: hfs: late journal init: volume on disk2s2 is read-only and journal is dirty.  Can not mount volume.
3.1.13. 21.42.42,000 kernel[0]: hfs_mounthfsplus: hfs_late_journal_init returned (22)
3.1.13. 21.42.42,000 kernel[0]: hfs_mounthfsplus: encountered errorr (22)
3.1.13. 21.42.42,000 kernel[0]: hfs_mountfs: encountered failure 22 
3.1.13. 21.42.42,000 kernel[0]: hfs_mount: hfs_mountfs returned 22

The issue seemed to be with bad journal. So I disabled journaling and the mount then worked just fine. Afterwards I enabled journaling again, all fine. I'm surprised that Disk Utility was not able to detect this during Verify Disk (which reported that all is fine).

Terminal option to disable journaling is:

sudo diskutil disableJournal force /dev/diskXsX

with diskXsX replaced to whatever is appropriate for your case. This command above will report error at exit, but just ignore it.

Solution 3

This happens to me sometimes when I unplug the drive without ejecting it first. Just plug the drive and don't do anything. It will show up again in Finder after waiting about 10 to 15 minutes.

My guess is that the OS has to re-index the entire drive if it weren't properly disconnected. That takes some time. Also, my drive is formatted with exFAT and that could be one of the reasons.

Comments

[Matt]

Thank you. However I might need help with mounting my harddrive with terminal. I found this post support.apple.com/kb/TA23941 where it is explained step by step. However once I get to the last step and run sudo mount -t hfs -o rdonly /dev/disk2s3 /Volumes/My Passport terminal always outputs the message usage: mount [-dfruvw] [-o options] [-t external_type] special node mount [-adfruvw] [-t external_type] mount [-dfruvw] special | node So somehow I might call the wrong params or so when trying to mount the drive. Any ideas on that?

[Lachlan]

the commands i use would be "diskutil mount /dev/disk0s2" *please note you may has to list the volumes to find out if your hard drive is recognized as "disk0s2" as it may change depending on what other volumes are mounted. Through 'diskutil' you can repair the disc etc. much like disk utilities which you have used but at root level. Also i would do a filesystems disk check, eg. "fsck_hfs -f /dev/disk0s2" again you'll need to verify the name of the volume, you may use this command "df -hl"

[Matt]

Well, my diskname would be disk1s3. If I run diskutil mount /dev/disk1s3 terminal says Volume on disk1s3 failed to mount … If I run fsck_hfs -f /dev/disk1s3 terminal says The volume My Passport appears to be OK. Any ideas?

[Lachlan]

this is very strange, could you list all details of the drive, eg. hows it formatted, has it ever played up before, is it used on more than one machine, is it used on different OS, do you safely eject the volume etc.. I had a problem like this once, cause windows was being difficult and did something to it and when i used it on my mac it would not mount, put it back on the windows machine, recognized it, put it on mac, fixed issue

[Matt]

Disk Utility says the format is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I do actually have it plugged into my TimeCapsule and I use it normally as Network Drive. However I got a new usb hub and unplugged the device from the TimeCapsule and connected the drive to the new hub instead of directly to the one and only usb slot on the time capsule. I tried it and everything seemed to work. However on the same evening I wanted to browse the external drive through my network and I couldn't access it - so I unplugged it and now I'm trying to fix it. Right now it's plugged into my mac directly.

[Matt]

If I plug the drive directly to my usb port on the timecapsule again nothing happens - not even the timecapsule itself shows up in my network drives. So the external drive kind of prevents the timecapsule drive to mount as well! Really really weird. So in essence all I tried is to extend the timecapsule with a simple usb hub so I could also add a network-printer besides my external-network-drive. This seemed to work when I tested it the first time, but late the evening my harddrive is not working again. The hub itself works fine. I do have it plugged in right now and have printer installed.

[Lachlan]

this sounds bad, have you tried it on other computers? i know its the drive that is bad but before doing more things to it, PRAM and SMC the computer, make sure there are no other peripheral devices attached when attempting to mount the drive, i think u mentioned earlier its firewire and USB so try both connections. although i doubt this will work, you could also try to recreate your previous set up. At the moment the drive doesnt sound very healthy, and data recoverys will fail as you cant mount it. if it was bumped or something there maybe a possibility of the sata connection falling out

[Matt]

PRAM and SMC might not help either because I also tried to mount the device on the MacBook of my Girlfriend. Same problems there - just doesn't mount. I'm helpless. I have a lot of data on it that I'd love to backup.

[Lachlan]

i'd be pulling it out of its case and working on it via my HDD docking station. The fact that it recognizes it the volume means there still a chance, ill look through my apple certification books see if i can remember any other methods i have used in the past. I would not recommend that you pull it out of its case, unless you have done this many times in the past and have a docking station. if you go to terminal and go "cd /Volumes" does the drive appear?

[Matt]

If I do diskutil list the drive appears. cd /Volumes and ls I only see my Mac HD and MyPassport but this is a directory I created my self to mount the actual My Passport … so NO, it does not appear.

[Lachlan]

well i dont know what else to try, its unfortunate that you dont have all the tools and software for this stuff. However your data is not lost, you will still be able to access it should you find a way to mount the drive, as i have seen really bad cases in the past and this is no where near as bad.

[Lachlan]

again you may look at such applications to aid you(although they may not recognize the drive as it wont mount); Drive genius, Data rescue 3 or disk warrior, you may also find others but not many others are very good

[Matt]

ok, this helped me a lot. Thank you! I'll might just contact so data recovery company or a local apple store if they may be able to mount the drive and backup my files. thanks again.

[Matt]

Well, I plugged it into Windows and installed some Software named MacDrive9 … on Windows I'm able to browse the files. I might do a backup on windows now.

[Matt]

Alright, I might give it a try. However to index my entire 400gb it might take longer than 15min I guess. I was able to read the drive on windows now, which is kind of a relieve. If it would come back alive in Finder and on my Mac - do you think I could use the drive furthermore or is it buggy?

[Lachlan]

good work, i would back the files up and reformat the drive, hopefully you will have no more issues

[Matt]

Ok, this might not work, because the drive automatically goes into a kind of standby mode after a few minutes. I don't think it's going to be indexed when the drive is not running!? I'll just back up the files on the old pc in my house since it's working there and than I'm going to format it completely.

[Partha Choudhury]

Unfortunately I have no way of knowing if the problem is the same as yours, I'm just telling my personal experience. My drive is a 500 GB WD Passport and I plug it to the USB port. I had this a few times already and it always comes back eventually. It might take longer than 15 minutes (but no more than 30 in my case - it might depend on how many files you have there). It also scared the hell outta me the first time, now it's just annoying.