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External hard drive failed on a back up of my parents old iMac so I'm in the dog house.
The backup onto time machine of the external hard drive said it was successful but then after the High Sierra install in would not recognise the USB and the drive was greyed out so I could not reinstall their data.
So, they are pissed....
Any recommendations of a company who can fix it and not cost the earth?
Based in Devon if that helps.
Ells
[Caveat: I know nothing about Macs.]
It sounds like a software failure rather than hardware, then.
Try the external drive on a different machine.
Take it out of the caddy and install it as an internal drive.
Does Time Machine not do some sort of cloud backup too?
Any recommendations of a company who can fix it and not cost the earth?
Pick one. You're not going to get much change out of a grand for professional recovery if you go down that road.
I tried the external drive on a different laptop and is still does not show the drive so I can't run first aid or mount the drive.
I ran a backup of the whole computer which apple call time machine which does a backup on the external hard drive. It said the back up was successful and complete and that is why I did the fish install as it had the dreaded beachball rainbow.
Could be all sort of issues, many things you can try before getting a company involved.
Could be cabling, power, usb socket death, file system marked dirty.
Try plugging it into several different macs first.
https://macpaw.com/how-to/access-external-hard-drive#:~:text=If%20yo u've%20plugged%20in,faulty%20cable%20or%20USB%20port.&text=Try%20a%20different%20USB%20cable,could%20be%20a%20hardware%20issue.
That link is good ^^^ follow those steps.
Assuming this an external USB drive, take the drive out and put it in a different caddy.
Take it out it's caddy and put it in a SATA reader would be my first start.
Out of curiosity it's not a Seagate is it?
It's a Weston Digital My Book Studio.
Apple customer support were rubbish over the last few day. They are usually excellent but I think they are hiring higher volumes of lower trained support. Before this issue, all have been really exceptional.
I took it to a computer repair guy today who said it was a hardware issue in the external hard drive and it would be minimum £900 to send it away to fix it.
This afternoon, I FIXED IT!
I installed Clean my mac x which is brilliant programme for Macs in general. If you are having issues with old Macs - get it!
Anyway, I ran the maintenance section and it went to verify and repair the HD. It took ages and I nearly stopped it. Then, BAM! it sorted it out and I could see the external HD on my desktop.
Thanks for all the replies. I always appreciate the help from you guys!
Lesson learned - back up the back ups!!!
Big love all xxx