Internal Hard Drive Unmounted

I am running off of a bootable external drive right now and somehow (or someone) unmounted my internal hard drive. I used to have the "Macintosh HD" disk icon and my external hard drive icon on the desktop. Now I only have my external icon. When I restart the computer + option it does not find the internal hard drive. How can I re-mount the internal hard drive? Any help would be appreciated.

Francine

iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Nov 28, 2009 6:13 PM

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3 replies

Nov 28, 2009 6:34 PM in response to mythcr8ze@yahoo.com

What appears on the Desktop is set in Finder preferences General tab. Make sure +Hard disks+ is checked/

However, that does not affect the drive actually mounting. Run Disk Utility. Does the drive appear in the sidebar? If it does, but the volume under the drive is shown but grayed out, select it (the volume) and click the Mount button in the toolbar.

Nov 28, 2009 8:07 PM in response to mythcr8ze@yahoo.com

That does not look good. Where is says "Media," it should have a description of the hard drive (such as size and model number) and under the drive should be the volume (usually called +Macintosh HD+ ).

The usual first steps would be to reset PRAM

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379

and if that does not help, reset SMC

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1543

which is basically unplugging ALL cables and power, and reconnecting using a precise procedure. When you reconnect the power cord, if you have been using an crowded or old power strip (surge suppressor), connect it directly to a wall power outlet, at least initially. Power it up with nothing connected, except for the power cord. Hopefully, it will start up from the internal drive again.

If it does not, connect just your keyboard/mouse, insert your Mac OS X installation disc (for the current system release) and restart with the C key held down. This forces startup from the optical drive and takes you to the Installer screen. Go up to the menu bar and under Utilities, select to run Disk Utility. See if the internal drive appears in the sidebar, hopefully with more than just "Media." But if you get that same thing as before, select it and run a +Repair Disk+ on the +First Aid+ tab, if possible.

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Internal Hard Drive Unmounted

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