new external hard drive has no desktop icon

Hi

Is this drive self-powered, or powered through USB? (If you have the option of plugging it in, and haven't tried, try that.)

If you launch Disk Utility, can you see the drive - and mount it - there?

Matt

You probably need to format the drive in Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder in Applications) before you can see the drive on the desktop.

I'm actually the same poster as Jacques Whitecloud
(my husband) above.
--the hard drive is powered through the USB port (seems to have power, it's blue indicator light is holding steady). But it also has an option for an external power cord which has to be bought separately. It's website seems to indicate that it won't need external power except in rare cases (?)
--I've searched the Western Digital site for applicable downloads. they all indicate that the Mac user does not need to intervene (?)
--all of their Passport downloads seem to support Windows systems
I did try going into Disk Utilities (following how to partition instructions from .Mac support) but there doesn't seem to be any icon or listed name for the hard drive

I'm very stuck and very grateful for you help.

Same problem with me, there is no harddisk detect in my disk utility only mac harddisk appear in disk utility... so how to connect this usb harddisk...arghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!
But when i using Ibook G4 there is no problem

The power at the Powerbook USB ports is not enough to power USB bus powered drives (well, there is enough to make it click and power the little blue light -big help, right?) and they will do what they are doing - not mounting is #1 symptom. Get the power supply - usually 12 volts or 5 volts.

There are oodles of posts here already or have been on this issue.

Recommendation - get rid of it for a firewire drive. USB is horrible for mass storage.

I also bought a USB powered 80 GB passport drive for use with my laptop. It worked fine with Panther but is totally incompatible with the current release of Tiger. I had many discussions with Western Digital and also with Apple and they weren't able to help with the problem. I am hoping that Apple and Western Digital will work together to resolve the problem with some sort of a patch to the operating system or a firmware fix for the drive. The drive shows up in the system profiler but Disk Utility and the Finder have no idea it is there. It doesn't have a mount point from Terminal so it is worthless with Tiger until they come out with a software fix. I have tried it on both laptops and desk machines and the problem is the same on any Mac running Tiger.

Hi guys. I just bought an 80 GB Passport tonight and it is showing up for me (10.3.9 on a TiBook 1GHz). I did have to using the port on the machine (it wouldn't show up using the keyboard port on my external keyboard). Not sure if this helps at all..

On a related note, if anyone knows how to change the drive icon, let me know- I have too many external drives!

Ted

Go to Applications, Utilities, Disk Utility. If the drive is recognized select it and click on Erase. Click the Erase button. This will format the new drive so the Mac will recognize it.

I should note that even though my drive showed up right away, I went ahead and reformatted it (Erase) to ensure no problems down the road.

Ted