Force mounting an external disk that is not recognized
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I recently bought a 4 TB naked (no enclosure) external hard drive that I mount via a Newer Tech dock (the ones where you insert the naked drive like bread in a toaster) and is connected to my MacBook pro via FireWire 800.
About a month later I wanted to use the drive and it would not mount.
Disk Utility reports that it is "Not Mounted".
When I connect the drive I get this:
> The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer.
So I tried terminal commands like:
diskutil list
which yelds this:
I also tried:
mount force /dev/disk3
and got:
I am at a loss, can anyone give me some advice on how to mount this drive?



mount: You must specify a filesystem type with -t.
and then:
mount force -t Apple_HFS /dev/disk3
which outputs:
usage: mount [-dfruvw] [-o options] [-t external_type] special node
mount [-adfruvw] [-t external_type]
mount [-dfruvw] special | node
I also tried:
diskutil repairVolume /dev/disk3
which gives back:
Error starting file system repair for disk3: Unrecognized file system (-69846)
and finally:
sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk3
which returns:

Asked by marcnyc
(481 rep)
Nov 8, 2017, 11:42 PM
Last activity: May 27, 2025, 07:12 PM
Last activity: May 27, 2025, 07:12 PM