MacBook won't recognize my WD after Snow Leopard upgrade

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

Hello, I’m in desperate need of assistance! I own a 1TB WD Elements hard drive and last night I upgraded from Leopard 10.5.8 to Snow Leopard 10.6.8. I plugged in the hard drive after fully upgrading to find that my MacBook no longer recognized it. I looked everywhere, disk utility. . . even downloaded Pathfinder 5. It has become utterly invisible!

Can anyone tell me what happened? Is there anything I can do?

Any help would be greatly appreciated! :wink:

2

Did you check and see if there are any updates for your external? There are issues with Snow Leopard do a search here. I’m not a Mac user.

Joe

3

Um. . . do you mean have I updated all my Mac OS X software to the latest? If so, than yes. If you mean there’s some sort of update on the Western Digital website that I need to download. . . than no.

I did seach the forum, but found no answer to my problem.

4

was your drive connected to the computer when you updated to snow leopard? if so, then you might have formatted the drive by accident.  not sure about mac os’s, but windows can reformat your drive if you are reinstalling windows with a drive connected.  also, you might want to turn off the computer, disconnect the drive, turn on the computer, and reconnect the drive once it’s fully up and running.  see if it shows up then.

5

I disconnected the drive before installing, so there was no way it could have been reformatted. Since then I have shutdown everything, restarted and checked that all cables were properly plugged in.

Still no luck! :cry:

6

can you try the drive on another mac to see if it shows up there?

7

I’ve a relative who owns an older iMac. I think it’s running Tiger, so I’m not sure if the drive would be compatible. I’ll test it out later today.

8

it should work on Tiger.

9

*sighs* I’m afraid to say it didn’t. Mind you, the iMac is at least 7 years old and the verson of Tiger it’s running on isn’t the newest version. My Aunt doesn’t have a home internet connection so I can’t update to check if it’s the fault of the OS. I have my phone which I use to tether my laptop, but there’s no way I would be able to risk getting caught by AT&T trying to download hundreds of a MBs to update the iMac 10.4.8.

That being said, I have noticed that while there’s a steady light when it’s plugged into the wall, when I insert the USB cord into the slot. . . nothing happens. It used to flash and such. Does this mean anything?

10

I don’t know.  but if I remember correctly, you need to at least have 10.4.11 for it to be compatible. 

11

I ended up lugging my Aunt’s iMac home with me and proceeded to upgrade it to Tiger 10.4.11. My hard drive did not appear anywhere. I looked in Disk Utility and System Profiler to no avail.

12

does the drive spin up like it normally would, with the light on the front flashing or moving (depending which model)?  if so, I would look online to try and find some kind of data recovery software and see if that can access the data, or restore the partition.

13

The light no longer flashes. There’s absolutely no reaction when I connect the USB cable to the MacBook. I’ve even tried other USB cables of the same type. It now seems to be an expensive brick.

Honestly, I’m very disappointed in Western Digital. I bought my WD Elements hard drive only 7 months ago! I’ve always been extremely careful with it, always packed it away when not in use.

There’s an immense amount of personal data being stored on it, and I absolutely cannot afford to pay for a new drive, let alone for data recovery.

14

unless you pull the drive out of the case and try it directly in a computer, I don’t know what else there is.  just know that it will void your warranty.

15

And today the light stopped even turning on when plugged in! I think this is the end. And since my hard drive is still within warrenty (thank god!), I’m going to send it back for a replacement.

Terrible to loose all that data, but. . . life goes on.

I just wish I could find an external hard drive that was truly reliable.

16

unfortunately, I doubt you ever will.  that’s why it is necessary to make sure that you have your data in multiple locations.  even if you have to use dvd’s for your critical data.  that’s why I look for the deals, and get two for the price of one.  a secondary backup will rarely be used except for storing data.