No access anymore to external Harddisk?

[The_Madman]

Dear users,

a friend of mine gave me his external harddrive (WD My Passport for Mac) because according to him it doesnt work with his macBook (High Sierra).
He cant access the data and asked me if i could help him to recover it....he says he used this drive last time maybe around one year ago.
When I connect the harddrive to my macBook (El Capitan) a window appears:
"This Medium couldnt be recognized" (sorry, i translate from German to English):
and I have as options: "initialize..", "ignore" and "eject"

When I clock on initialize des Diskutility Tool appears
There i can see the drive but not its partition(s).
What I mean is:
My internal drive appears as "SAMSUNG SSD" and underneath i see the drive which appears normally in the Finder, "iDisk", in my case.
For the external drive only "WD MY PASSPORT" is shown and no drive/partition underneath.
It's also curious that under "partition table" it says "Apple partition table" (sorry just translating) and NOT GUID.
If i select "FIRST AID" and click on "run" it shows a green check sign without doing anything.

If i go to the Terminal and put it "diskutil list" the following appears:

/dev/disk1 (external, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk1
1: Apple_partition_map 32.3 KB disk1s1
2: Apple_Driver43 28.7 KB disk1s2
3: Apple_Driver43 28.7 KB disk1s3
4: Apple_Driver_ATA 28.7 KB disk1s4
5: Apple_Driver_ATA 28.7 KB disk1s5
6: Apple_FWDriver 262.1 KB disk1s6
7: Apple_Driver_IOKit 262.1 KB disk1s7
8: Apple_Patches 262.1 KB disk1s8
9: Apple_APFS 1.0 TB disk1s9

After writing "diskutil verifyDisk /dev/disk1":
"Unable to verify this whole disk: A GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitioning scheme is required (-69773)"

I googled and found some non-free SW which does find files but the SW costs sometimes more than $70.

Has anybody any hint what I could try?
(I have also access to a Windows and Linux PC)

THX!

 

[IWT]

A warm welcome to Mac-Forums. And thank you for your post and the trouble you have taken to include as much detail as possible, especially as it involves translation into English.

The one thing I wish to ask: are you simply wanting the WD My Passport External Hard Drive (EHD) to work on your MacBook - or - are you trying to recover the data that was on there before?

My confusion is that I initially thought that you were gifted the WD EHD for your own use, then read that you're looking at Recovery Software.

If it's for your own use, reformatting the Drive hopefully wouldn't be a problem unless it has failed completely. But if Data Recovery is your plan, then from what you've tried already, this looks to be either a non-starter or an expensive experiment.

Ian

 

[The_Madman]

thx for your reply
it's rather the second: DATA RECOVERY for my friend
he has a lot of personal data (pictures, videos) on it....
I am rather surprised that i cannot mount it, i even tried on Linux....
why do u think that its a "non-starter"?

PS i changed the first post and added that i want to recover the data

 

[IWT]

Thank you. You have been very helpful and everything is clear.

My reason for concern regarding Data Recovery is that your friend was using it, then found he/she could no longer access the Drive or Data.

Then you have already gone to great lengths to access the Drive as detailed in your first post, including Terminal and Linux.

There are other members on our forum who may be able to come up with further suggestions and I hope they can, but from my perspective, it looks like you will need Data Recovery software or a Professional Lab to get the data back because I think the Drive has failed. And that is expensive.

At least the WD My Passport has a spinning platter hard drive. It it were a SSD, that would be even more difficult, verging on the impossible.

Hold on, wiser counsel may be forthcoming.

Ian

 

[chscag]

The reason the drive could not be recognized by your MacBook Pro running El Capitan is that the drive is formatted to the new Apple File System: APFS. You would need to be running at least High Sierra or later in order for the drive to be read by your MacBook Pro.

Also, it appears that he has multiple smaller partitions or images loaded on the drive. That is going to make it more difficult to extract data.

The advice above from Ian is likely correct in that some type of data recovery is needed. The problem with that is currently no commercial data recovery software works with the new Apple File System (APFS). It appears that he might need a professional data recovery service which is expensive.

 

[pm-r]

If you can find an older Mac using an old OS version, you could try connecting the drive to it and see if you could not recover your friend's data.

It will probably depend on what mac OS version and what Mac model they were using and the actual partition format that was used when they had the external drive connected, to see if the data can possibly be accessed.




- Patrick
======



 

[chscag]

If you can find an older Mac using an old OS version, you could try connecting the drive to it and see if you could not recover your friend's data.

How is that going to work Patrick? The drive is formatted to APFS. An old macOS version is not going to work. He needs High Sierra or later to be able to read APFS.

 

[ferrarr]

I wonder if the friend rolled back their OS version and that’s why they are unable to read the disk as well?


Sent from my iPad using Mac-Forums

 

[pm-r]

How is that going to work Patrick? The drive is formatted to APFS. An old macOS version is not going to work. He needs High Sierra or later to be able to read APFS.

I'm not really sure that we really know what format the drive is in, and that's why I suggested trying what I said.



- Patrick
======I

 

[chscag]

I'm not really sure that we really know what format the drive is in, and that's why I suggested trying what I said.



- Patrick
======I

9: Apple_APFS 1.0 TB disk1s9

 

[pm-r]

Opps...!!! I guess I missed that little detail!!!

Thanks, for pointing it out.



- Patrick
======

 

[The_Madman]

But that's what i do NOT understand
It seems having APFS partitions but an OLD APPLE PARTITION SCHEME?!
is that possible?

and somehow i think that combination troubles the diskutil?

 

[chscag]

It seems having APFS partitions but an OLD APPLE PARTITION SCHEME?! is that possible?

No, definitely not. APFS formatting uses the GUID partition scheme.

Your external drive quite frankly is messed up. If you can extract the data you need, that drive should be reformatted to the HFS+ format, GUID partition scheme.

 

[pm-r]

Your external drive quite frankly is messed up. If you can extract the data you need, that drive should be reformatted to the HFS+ format, GUID partition scheme.

Of course any data extraction MUST be done and attempted before any Formatting is even considered.

Just in case it wasn't clear!!!!




- Patrick
======

 

[jasongoldworthy]

just my 2 pence worth here


it may be the drive is failing hence why its not allowing them to mount the drive no longer,

as its odd the drive was fine and then it just stopped being accessible,

does the drive sound like its spinning up ok ?

and is there any clicking sounds ?

again these may indicate the drive is going bad,

 

[adambtolbert]

If you want to recover your old hard drive so why don’t you try some utility which are not much expensive? You can try stellar data recovery professional for mac, Recuva, TesDisk, DiskDrill. All these utilities are able to recover lost partition data, formatted drive data easily. Thanks

 

[pm-r]

For any Data recovery attempts, it might be worth trying the bare drive itself in a known good different enclosure.

Quite often the electronics controlling the drive itself can fail preventing any proper operation, but the drive itself is okay.





- Patrick
======