mustngpny50

Q: External Hard Drive Not Showing Up

Ok so Im not sure what is going on here. I come in to use my computer yesterday and notice the external HD is not on my desktop. It is running, but not displaying on the desktop. My first step is to restart the computer. I restart the computer and still nothing. Today, I opened up disk utility. The hard drive shows up in the disk utility. I have run both Verify and Repair disk to the external HD and after the scans it says the HD appears to be OK. I restart the computer and nothing happens. I can also eject the HD from the disk utility. After it is ejected I can unplug it and plug it back in and it will display in the Disk Utility, but nowhere else. It does not show up on the desktop and does not show up in the side bar. I have also gone into to preferences to verify that the box is checked to show the external HD.

I am trying to give as much detail as I can to help diagnose the problem and I have searched through the forums but can't seem to find anything or anyone that has had a similar problem. I need pointed in the right direction to try and figure out why the HD is not showing up on the Desktop. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.5)

Posted on Jan 3, 2011 8:25 PM

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Q: External Hard Drive Not Showing Up

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  • by ci47,

    ci47 ci47 Dec 1, 2013 2:56 AM in response to mustngpny50
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 1, 2013 2:56 AM in response to mustngpny50

    For me, after much vain efforts, this 2-lines approach worked:

     

    http://osxdaily.com/2013/05/13/mount-unmount-drives-from-the-command-line-in-mac -os-x/

     

    I found the identifier, then mounted succesfully.

  • by dina.magh,

    dina.magh dina.magh Jan 7, 2014 3:04 PM in response to jsd2
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 7, 2014 3:04 PM in response to jsd2

    i have the same problem

     

    this what appears

    total 8

    lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  admin  -         1 Jan  5 14:57 ' -> /

    drwxrwxrwt@  3 root  admin  hidden  102 Jan  8 00:47 .

        com.apple.FinderInfo      32

    0: group:everyone deny add_file,add_subdirectory,directory_inherit,only_inherit

    drwxr-xr-x  35 root  wheel  -      1258 Dec 18 12:05 ..

    Apples-MacBook-Pro:~ apple$

  • by dina.magh,

    dina.magh dina.magh Jan 7, 2014 3:08 PM in response to mustngpny50
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 7, 2014 3:08 PM in response to mustngpny50

    this also appear to me

     

    I tried mounting the disk and it says "The disk “dina” could not be mounted.

  • by dina.magh,

    dina.magh dina.magh Jan 7, 2014 3:17 PM in response to UtahRugby
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 7, 2014 3:17 PM in response to UtahRugby

    thaaanx

     

    i did this i restart my mac and open it i founde it mounted

    after long serch

  • by BallsDeepCharlie,

    BallsDeepCharlie BallsDeepCharlie Jan 20, 2014 7:57 AM in response to mustngpny50
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 20, 2014 7:57 AM in response to mustngpny50

    This happened to me, did Disk utility, disk was on there, verified it, repaired it, still did not show up. Also, my computer would not even let me eject the *******.

     

    Here's what did it.

     

    In all my rage at my less-than-a-year-old-seagate pushed me to slam on the power button. As I held down that button, with no mercy mind you, I relished in the sound to hear my computer turn off. In this moment of rage, I did not unplug my hard drive or even my iPhone. Upon the restart, I noticed something in my finder, my hard drive! alas! what a glorious day.

     

    Moral of the story kids, manually turn off your mac and your hard drive should be there.

  • by gung310,

    gung310 gung310 Mar 4, 2014 10:24 PM in response to jsd2
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 4, 2014 10:24 PM in response to jsd2

    I had the same issue with a grayed-out partition that was recognized, but could not be mounted.

     

    OS 10.9.2, 2013 iMac, Seagate Backup Plus Drive 1TB.

     

    Despite months of proper functioning and it would not mount, not after power-cycling and trying different USB ports. Even tried mounting via diskutil from the command line as mentioned here. Both Verify Disk and Repair Disk in Disk Utility reported no problems.

     

    I finally gave in and decided to Erase, as it was only Time Machine backup data, and all the original data was on my iMac. Erase took about 10 seconds, and then the disk un-grayed in Disk Utility, and showed up in Finder as mounted.

     

    I'm running a Time Machine backup right now (on the empty disk) and all seems to be working fine again.

  • by MacApple258,

    MacApple258 MacApple258 Mar 6, 2014 8:07 AM in response to mustngpny50
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Mar 6, 2014 8:07 AM in response to mustngpny50

    Follow the below steps in the exact order listed.

    1. Unmount the problem external drives using Disk Utility.

    2. Turn power switch off, if there is a switch.

    3. Disconnect the data wire connection at the external drive box.

    4. Disconnect the power cord at the external drive box.

    5. Wait at least 5 minutes.

    6. Plug the power cord into the external drive box.

    7. Plug the data wire connection into the external drive box.

         a. If using more than one external drive, let the drives become connected one-at-time.

    8. Turn on power switch if present.

    9. The problem drive should appear in Finder.

    10.If the problem drive does not appear, repeat the above steps with Step 5 having a wait time of one hour.

    11.If the problem persist, repeat the above steps with Step 5 having a wait time of at least 24 hours.

    12.If successful, please give positive feedback on this site.

  • by fitzlefrog,

    fitzlefrog fitzlefrog Mar 28, 2014 11:04 PM in response to mustngpny50
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mar 28, 2014 11:04 PM in response to mustngpny50

    I was having the same problem; disk not showing in Finder but visible in Disc Utility.  Then I noticed in the Finder window, just below the Favourites list  and above Shared is a pale grey word: DEVICES.  Clicking on this worked for me. External devices then visible.   Good luck!

  • by SteveJobsReunited,

    SteveJobsReunited SteveJobsReunited Apr 21, 2014 1:10 AM in response to SanCarlosDad
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 21, 2014 1:10 AM in response to SanCarlosDad

    Thank you so much for this, this seemed to be the only thing that helped and solved the problem that was addressed on this forum.

  • by bastian.51,

    bastian.51 bastian.51 May 23, 2014 1:35 AM in response to melissaamelia
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 23, 2014 1:35 AM in response to melissaamelia

    Yay this totally worked thank you !!!

  • by lmschers,

    lmschers lmschers Jun 30, 2014 1:11 AM in response to mustngpny50
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 30, 2014 1:11 AM in response to mustngpny50

    My problem is slightly different.
    I can see my external Seagate drive on the desktop,
    but only half of the files show up.
    These are only the new files. 
    I know there are older pictures and videos on the disk.

    It also says that it is still full of data.

     

    What gives?  I want to see my old pictures.

    I have already verified and repaired the disk, but nothing seemed to be wrong.

  • by eisbaum,

    eisbaum eisbaum Jul 8, 2014 7:46 AM in response to ci47
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 8, 2014 7:46 AM in response to ci47

    Can you please specify what you mean by successfully "mounting" the external hard drive with these terminal commands?

    I can see my ext.hard drive recognised on Disk Utility and also when I typed in these "mount" commands in terminal, it showed up.

    But the final result I want to get is to browse my ext. hard drive in Finder so that I can back up my data.

    Since I don't know much about Terminal, do you mean that I can achieve "that final result" simply by mounting the ext. hard drive in Terminal?

  • by eisbaum,

    eisbaum eisbaum Jul 8, 2014 7:56 AM in response to melissaamelia
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 8, 2014 7:56 AM in response to melissaamelia

    I can see my ext.hard drive recognised in Disk Utility but the "verify/repair the disk" button is not activated. I don't know why?

    Also, unlike what SanCarlosDad explained, there is no indented gray drive name showing under the ext. hard drive in Disk Utility.

    It seems like the only option activated in Disk Utility for my hard drive is to reformat it.

    Could it be a key to explain my problem further? Anyone? Can you help me please?


    FYI, I already tried to change the view options in Finder to show "hard disk" and "external drive" as well as "Devices."

    I don't think my problem is related to the "viewing" dimension.

    I'm not planning to simply format my hard disk either because this is my only back up drive unfortunately.

  • by HelpmeObeeWhan,

    HelpmeObeeWhan HelpmeObeeWhan Aug 10, 2014 6:25 PM in response to mustngpny50
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 10, 2014 6:25 PM in response to mustngpny50

    I am having similar problems and before I go ahead with something I want some feedback.

     

    Having similar problem with an Old External (Details listed in Screenshot). One drive is grayed out, the other works fine. I want to attempt Picture2 since none of the other opinions listed in this thread have worked.

     

    I want to know the repercussions of this act. I portioned the news drive space labeled 'Iomega Backup' on the drive (750 GB vs 500). And it is my understanding that DU will copy the non showing up 'Jeremy's Stuff' into Iomega Backup and then erase the contest of ST350082.

     

    Anything I should know about this before moving ahead?

  • by TTobie2,

    TTobie2 TTobie2 Oct 20, 2014 1:53 PM in response to BallsDeepCharlie
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Oct 20, 2014 1:53 PM in response to BallsDeepCharlie

    I tried all of the above, including shutting down mac and drive.

     

    Finally, did it again, but this time I unplugged the power cord.

     

    Waited 5 minutes, plugged it back in and rebooted and VIOLA.

     

    Thank you!

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