[Ti] External Hard Drive Problem (Extra-nasty)

[~flipper]

>Sorry! Is the free test mode of Data Rescue answering that no files can be recovered? Or is it that you just feel so certain that it is unreachable that you didn't even try?

Hi Lisbeth,

My comment was merely regarding the fact that the external drive is not mounting, at all, so i couldn't over-write files, in the meantime, even if I wanted to. I sincerely hope it comes back. It's a software (Directory() issue, probably, which is why I was amazed that DiskWarrior couldn't pick it up on a scan.

At the time of the incident I was reading a book in Adobe Acrobat Pro (the app was on my internal drive, the pdf file was on the external). I closed the book, it was probably saving changes, and at the same time, double-clicked another large pdf file on the external drive. Acrobat and the Finder both hung.  I tried to back out of the hung apps, resorting to a kill process in Terminal. The apps were killed...sort of, in that they no longer appeared in the list of processes, nor in a top command in Terminal. Yet their Dock icons still showed them as "Not responding", and the main menu bar showed them, or, rather Terminal, as hung also when I tried to simply quit the Terminal. At that point the SystemUIServer crashed rapidly, and following safe boots, verbose boots (which showed a 'minor' mount count well below my internal/external drives/partitions, a couple of repeated single-user boots (fsck), a Disk Utility op from the Tiger installer, and finally, the DiskWarrior failure to 'discover' the drive...I temporarily gave up.

Not sure if the genesis of the whole business was an Acrobat goofup, writing faulty data to the Directory on the external drive, or if the Finder and/or Acrobat was the culprit.

When i restart the device is recognized (by Peripheral Vision), partially, as an "Oxford IDE Device", rather than the usual listing of it's three partitions, by name.. No icon/name in the Finder. And it shows up in devices and volumes in Apple System Profiler, as having a max data rate of 800 Mbits, and a Connection speed of 'unknown' (which, ironically, now shows as 800 Mbits, also, albeit with no mount).

The system sees the device but can't/won't read the first blocks, and either coincidentally, or as a result, the device isn't given a mount point. It isn't even read-only mounted, nevermind read/write enabled, that's why I said it was 'safely' beyond reach. If i had lost a file or directory on a still-mounted drive, I would, of course, not move,delete, or write to the drive until after attempting a recovery.

brian s