1 TB WD Elements Problem

[ALangella]

All of a sudden , the files are still there but I cannot access them on my MAC

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there ALangella,

That is unpleasant. 🙁

Have you used the drive on a Win system up until now? If this is the case, you need to format the drive to a file system that is supported by both Win and Mac such as ExFat. Of course, you need to plug the drive to the Win system first in order to back up the data stored on it.
What is the current file system of the drive?

In case you have used the drive on your Mac and you can't access your data anymore, then it would be nice if you couldprovide some more information on the issue you are facing.
Do you get some sort of an error message?
Have you tried the drive on another Mac? In case you can do that, it may be a good idea to try it.
Attaching the drive with a different cable to another port will not hurt as well.

How to format a drive: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=rTpXXa

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[ALangella]

This drive has been used on a MAC for at least the last 3 years. I do not recall the acronym for the formatting I used but I am quite certain it is formatted correctly. It has been used by my daughter as a place to store her photography projects. She creates folders and drags the specific photos from her mac into the folders.
Suddenly all of the folders are grey. You can see them but double clicking to open does nothing - almost as if read privileges were taken away. I have tried a different mac and different usb cables and ports with the same result.
Command I shows that there is still all of the data. The drive sounds fine - no clicking or weird noises
Apple's Disk Utility cannot repair the drive and there are no error messages - it appears on the desktop as soon as the machines start up

 

[D_Know_WD]

It seems that there are some threads on this issue in the Mac communities.

Check these out:
http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/folder-greyed-out-cannot-access.1008612/
http://www.macissues.com/2015/01/27/fix-inaccessible-and-grayed-out-folders-in-the-os-x-finder/

Hope this will help,
D_Know_WD

 

[ALangella]

It seems that there are some threads on this issue in the Mac communities.

Check these out:
http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/folder-greyed-out-cannot-access.1008612/
http://www.macissues.com/2015/01/27/fix-inaccessible-and-grayed-out-folders-in-the-os-x-finder/

Hope this will help,
D_Know_WD

 

[ALangella]

I tried again this morning... I was mistaken in part of my description of the trouble... The folders appear normally but when you double click on them they show as having no data... the drive itself a 1TB WD Elements drive shows 180GB available which to me, means the data is still there just scrambled...
I purchased Disk Warrior - it says there is a disk failure... any additional guidance woud be GREATLY appreciated
One further item - I tried MAC's Disk Utility it says that it is unable to unmount the drive in order to repair.. could some APP be preventing thedrive unmounting?