eject G drive slim

With newer versions of macOS, you will find the mounted volumes listed under "Locations" on the Finder's sidebar. Make sure to check the Finder's preferences/settings are configured to show external drives on the sidebar or the Desktop. The latter setting is located on the General tab of the Finder's Preference/Settings.

You should also be able to use the Finder's "Go" menu and select "Computer" which will show all mounted volumes including the root of your own boot drive.

Ok, I misunderstood the problem somewhat. I didn't consider that the drive may not even be connecting at all. To add to @BDAqua's suggestion about Disk Utility.....you may need to click "View" within Disk Utility and select "Show All Devices" before the physical drives appear on the left pane of Disk Utility. If the physical drive is not appearing, it means there is some sort of hardware issue. Try using another USB port and cable.

If you are using an Apple Silicon M-series laptop, then make sure that you allowed external devices to connect. See the "Allow accessories to connect" to "automatically when unlocked" just in case you are missing the prompt when connecting the drive.

Is the drive connected directly to the Mac?

martintheoldie wrote:

What's the damage if I just pull out the USB connector?

You may corrupt the file system which could prevent it from mounting.

However, SSD's can encounter issues if it encountered an unusual power situation....hopefully that is not the case since there usually is no way to recover except from a backup although sometimes there may be a power cycle trick to get an SSD back.

Does it show in Disk Utility?

Open Activity Monitor in Utilities, View>All Processes, sort on Name, see if fsck is running, if so force quit it.

Here is what you should see in the Finder for the "Go" menu, it has been there for as long as I can remember (I'm not aware of any easy customizations to change the layout):

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