Mac users, try powering down, and then as soon as you hear the chime hold down the Option/Alt key. (if you don’t want to read my long post and are trying to recover an external drive that won’t mount).
I have two WD Passports, and had been using one exclusively for Time Machine backups for my MBP. Recently, right after I’d installed Yosimite I got a virus (iWorm) and needed to wipe my drive and start anew. Thankfully I listened to my instincts and did do some extrabacking up to my 500gb drive but I was really counting on restoring from the 1TB drive.
I’ve had a great amount of distress because although my system immediately asked for my Time Machine password it stopped appearing in the Finder section. I tried swapping USB cables, tested the ports, in Disc Utility it would show but would not mount, would not allow me to repair. Oh, originally the drive had appeared in Finder and I tried Migration Asssitant (I’m a total newb when it comes to Macs…good thing lots of Windows experience because this kinda stuff happened all the time :).
Anyway, this afternoon I shut down my laptop and then restarted and once I heard the chime I held down the option/alt key. I don’t know what this command is called but it allowed me to see everything attached to my system. I was so relieved to see the Time Machine/ Passport Drive … Disc utility just kept telling me to backup my files and start fresh but how does one back up files when the drive won’t mount?? So, I selected the passport; it had a pic with questionmarks and prompted me for password~I guessed that it wanted the Time Machine password and then it opened in Disc Utility and allowed me to repair it. It took some time and a few times I thought perhaps it was just stalled. But it came back saying it had repaired, it showed that it was mounted but would still not let me eject. I restarted my machine, entered password when prompted and, voila! it appeared under Devices as it should. I drilled down and saw all my files! Still in normal startup and time machine backups was bold (rather than greyed out like before) and is allowing me to run another repair.
This is a long post but I"m hoping that if it allows me to salvage my files and get them to another drive before this one gives up the ghost I’ll be so pleased…and I hope that even if this helps one other person then that’s great. From what I’ve read this is not an unusal problem with these drives…what’s up with that? It’s not as though they are inexpensive, and especailly if we need two of them!
Update: it finished repairing and I am now just dropping files into My Documents … going to buy new harddrive when I get to town this weekend!
UPDATE: 4 days later & the harddrive is still working and has allowed me to retrieve all files. Occassionally “beeping” so I consider it warning to no rely on anymore.
