"IF THE DRIVE IS NOT MAKINH NOISES"fossiltooth wrote:Error Message:
"This drive has reported a fatal hardware error to Disk Utility.
If the drive has not failed completely, back up as much data as you can and then replace it with a working drive"
Seeing that it ain't showing up on the desktop, I'll assume this means it has "failed completely"? Any intermediary options here?
This message, even though it sounds bad, ain't the end.
Start your computer, hook up the drive, open "disk utility" located in your applications/utilities folder, see if it shows up in the list, ifso, mount it, if it isn't making horrible noises, if not, try changing a cable, if it isn't spinning, tap it lightly on the side to see if it will spin up, try disk utility to mount it again, if it shows up, don't quit disk utility, use disk warrior or techtool pro and back that thang up.
Then, throw that disk away, keep the enclosure though and put a new drive in it.
It may be the case that your cable went bad, your drive may have lost power from a power problem, or a loose connection, I've pulled drives out of enclosures and just put them back in and re hooked up the internal ribbon cables and had them work for years again, ya never know, if it didn't beep it probably will if it was a true hardware error and you should try everything if it didn't.
That "fatal error" doesn't necessarily mean death. Beeps do. noises do.