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 imneway,

    imneway imneway Oct 22, 2015 8:34 PM in response to mustngpny50
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 22, 2015 8:34 PM in response to mustngpny50

    I had this problem too. My LaCie didn't appear in Finder. I can find it in Disk Utility and I can even visit it in Finder by right click it in Disk Utility and select "Show in Finder"...

     

    At last I tried the solution in the following link and it worked. It turned out that somehow my drive got set to "invisible", which is a filesystem attribute. Hope this can help you too.

     

    http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/77352/external-drive-mounts-but-doesnt- appear-in-finder-anymore

  • by klaingh,

    klaingh klaingh Nov 14, 2015 9:48 PM in response to jsd2
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 14, 2015 9:48 PM in response to jsd2

    total 8

    drwxrwxrwt@  4 root  admin  hidden  136 12 Nov 11:51 .

      com.apple.FinderInfo   32

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

    drwxr-xr-x  34 root  wheel  -      1224 22 Oct 08:35 ..

    lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  admin  -         1 12 Nov 11:51 Macintosh HD -> /

    drwxrwxrwx   0 root  wheel  -         0 15 Nov 16:38 MobileBackups

  • by StazzyBoo17,

    StazzyBoo17 StazzyBoo17 Jan 17, 2016 4:39 PM in response to MacApple258
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 17, 2016 4:39 PM in response to MacApple258

    This worked for me! Disk utility would not recognize hard drive to repair it nor would it show up in finder while all my other hard drives (all formatted as NTFS) showed up just fine, I knew power was working. However when running Windows Parallels if I plugged it in a pop up showed up asking if I wanted my OS or Windows to recognize the hard drive, I tried both and it wouldn't show up on either.

     

    So I followed this post, I unplugged the USB from my computer, the unplugged the usb cord connection from the hard drive and then power. Left it unpowered for probably 45 minutes (because I forgot about it). The plugged the cords back into hard drive then USB into computer and both Disk Utility and my finder recognizing and seeing it just fine!

  • by cortlandia,

    cortlandia cortlandia Jan 18, 2016 7:58 AM in response to Sam Haron
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 18, 2016 7:58 AM in response to Sam Haron

    Thanks. Simple solution.

  • by irisjchan,

    irisjchan irisjchan Jan 22, 2016 1:56 AM in response to mustngpny50
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 22, 2016 1:56 AM in response to mustngpny50

    I have a similar problem, but my flash drive isn't showing up anywhere on my iMac.

    It shows up on other laptops and computers, but not my iMac which is the new 27" 5k one.

    When I plug the flash drive into the iMac, its light turns on indicating that it's plugged in and working, but it doesn't show up in the disk utility, finder window, desktop, or anywhere at all.

    I've tried checking my finder preferences, erasing my flash drive on a separate laptop, restarting my iMac, and some more things.

    The drive that I have is a WD MyPassport drive.

     

    Does anyone have any suggestions?

  • by gung310,

    gung310 gung310 Jan 22, 2016 6:57 AM in response to irisjchan
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 22, 2016 6:57 AM in response to irisjchan

    Have you tried unmounting/mounting via the command line? Also, this may be obvious, but have you tried it on other ports (or a known working device on the port in question) to ensure that the port itself isn't the issue?

  • by irisjchan,

    irisjchan irisjchan Jan 24, 2016 11:39 AM in response to gung310
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 24, 2016 11:39 AM in response to gung310

    Actually, I fixed it just by unplugging everything in the USB ports and restarting my computer! It ended up being a really easy fix! Thanks for the help!

  • by MelmoMaggins16,

    MelmoMaggins16 MelmoMaggins16 Feb 25, 2016 11:35 PM in response to mustngpny50
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 25, 2016 11:35 PM in response to mustngpny50

    I have had this issue for months and none of these solutions worked for me but this is what I did to get my HD to show up again.

     

    Open your HD (if you cannot find it even on your desktop two finger/right click the finder > Go To Folder type in /Volumes/What Your HD is named

    Then on the top by the apple click Finder > Preferences...

    Click (from the 4 options) "Sidebar"

    Then scroll down to "Devices" Notice that next to hard drives there is a - not a check mark.  Click the - and a check will appear.

    Check to see if your HD shows up, mine did.

     

    Easy solution!!

  • by ^awesome.ky^,

    ^awesome.ky^ ^awesome.ky^ Apr 5, 2016 4:06 AM in response to mustngpny50
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 5, 2016 4:06 AM in response to mustngpny50

    I also had the same problem....i had tried every software, every trick and every website and I was about to loose hope....

     

    Until finally I discovered an easy n reaaaaly simple solution...

     

    Download the original NTFS for mac OS X software from seagate's software driver support website sectiona and vola!!! It's done!

  • by drappoc,

    drappoc drappoc May 14, 2016 12:40 PM in response to MacApple258
    Level 1 (4 points)
    May 14, 2016 12:40 PM in response to MacApple258

    The Onyx utility worked a treat

    now I have the icon back

     

    Thank you

  • by TM650,

    TM650 TM650 May 23, 2016 10:03 AM in response to Sam Haron
    Level 1 (4 points)
    May 23, 2016 10:03 AM in response to Sam Haron

    Thanks. This solved my problem.  Ext drive was connected and working, but it would not show up in Finder sidebar.  The main hard disk and other ext drives were displayed, but this one disappeared after I did a drag and drop of the drive into a program (from the App Store) to find duplicate files.  I don't know how it ever got into the App Store.  Anyway, even though the drive no longer showed in the Side Bar under Devices, I could go to the <my name> iMac item under devices in Side Bar and I could see all of the ext hard drives including the missing drive.  The rogue find duplicates app appears to have removed the entry in Side Bar.  As Sam mentions, I open Find Preferences and clicked on Side Bar.  I noticed that External Disks (under Devices) was not selected or deselected.  Instead, it had a "-" in the box. I clicked the box until it was selected again (check mark appears) and the missing ext drive reappeared in the Side Bar.

  • by Judeaj,

    Judeaj Judeaj Jun 24, 2016 7:57 PM in response to anarKaliG
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Jun 24, 2016 7:57 PM in response to anarKaliG

    OMG THIS WORKED! THANK YOU!

    I had accidentally dragged my external drive off my side finder panel earlier today and I'm wondering if that had something to do with it. Thanks again for this super easy solution!

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