How to fix my Toshiba hard drive?

[Nikolas]

It is a 1 TB SATA hard drive. It lights up when plugged in to my mac and it spins. But the macbook doesn't recognize it so that I can't see what is inside. How should I go about troubleshooting it?
Yeah I messed it up when I tried removing everything, reformatting it then putting everything back on. I took it to best buy and he said it wasn't salvageable. Is there anyway to just take all the data and transfer it to a new hard drive manually? like actually taking apart the hard drive?

[ArmyGuy]

have you formatted it ? wow SilverTongueDevil you couldn't be more wrong , sorry but ya screwed the pooch on this one

[Geek Squad]

Try slightly removing the USB 3.0 plug from the port in your MacBook. USB 3.0 devices my short when connecting to USB 2.0 slots. Also the media may not be formatted for Mac use out of the box, open Disk Utility and reformat for Mac use. If there is any data on the drive it will be lost during the format process, please ensure any data is backed up before moving forward with the format process.

Agent Brendan N
Badge 52891
Senior Geek Squad Data Recovery | Data Recovery Division
Geek Squad Social Media Team
1/3/2014

[SilverTonguedDevil]

Yes, I got two "ThumbsDown" from the two PC geeks who don't know Macs, so they resort to abusive language and no real experience or knowledge in their extreme hatred of anything made by Apple.

Contrary to what Geek Squad thinks, there is no need to format the drive to see it in Mac OS. ALL FORMATS WILL MOUNT IN MAC OS. Macs can always mount any format that Windows can mount. NOTICE I SAID "MOUNT". I didn't say install Mac OS on it; I didn't say save files to it; I just said it will mount and you see the drive in a Finder window (if Finder preferences are set to show external disks in the sidebar) and in Disk Utility. NOTHING ABOUT THE FORMAT BEING NTFS will keep Disk Utility from seeing the dive.

Open Disk Utility and see if the drive is shown at left.

"No."
Done, Bad hardware. Either cable, or case, or HDD itself. Replace part to fix it. You cannot repair any of these three items. Replace the defective one. {{Technically, lab technicians in a clean-room can take a HDD apart and read data from the platters, but it costs more than US$500. http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/ }}

"Yes, it is there in Disk Utility." (Even if greyed, it is there? Fine.)
Then do this...
– Select the named partition (could be named "NO NAME").
– Look for the format along the bottom of the DU window.
– For NTFS, connect it to a Windows system, and use the disk check tools in "Properties" or use the Administrator Tools to repair or format it.
– For any other format, select the "First Aid" tab, and click "Repair Disk".

EDIT :
Nunya and Armyguy are totally off-track. Neither of them has ever connected any Windows drive to any Mac, so what they say is wrong from guessing rather than actual knowledge. That Apple article is about INSTALLING MAC OS. It says nothing at all about which formats will mount in Mac OS.

If you ever in your life used a Mac with any Windows drive, you would know EVERYTHING I say is 100% CORRECT. Any NTFS drive connected to any Mac OS 10.4 or later will mount perfectly, barring file system corruption or defective hardware. I even have used NTFS formatted drives internally in an old Power Mac G4 with no problem, except that in order to save files to it, third-party software is needed, but the DRIVE MOUNTS PERFECTLY with no added software at all. The limitation is with WRITING files to NTFS. By default, Mac OS is read-only for NTFS, but there are plenty of free and paid solutions to that. It is just an academic comment, since the question is not about copying files. It is about mounting / seeing the drive.

About 85% of my students at university have NTFS formatted drives that they bring to class to copy materials from my Mac. NEVER has any drive failed to mount, unless it was corrupt, and even then it does ALWAYS appear in Disk Utility.

When will you PC geeks learn to stay clear of the Mac questions until you use a Mac? You don't know about BMWs if you only own a Chevy, do you?

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[Nunya]

If only SilverTongueDevil had a clue about Apples with the big Apple avatar.

Darn shame Apple disagrees with you.