External Hard Drive Not Showing Up

Question

Level 1

25 points

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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Answer 1

fe_russo

Level 1

4 points

Mar 7, 2017 6:51 AM in response to jsd2

total 8

drwxrwxrwt@ 3 root admin hidden 102 7 Mar 11:12 .

com.apple.FinderInfo 32

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

drwxr-xr-x 38 Fernando staff - 1360 5 Dez 2014 ..

lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin - 1 7 Mar 11:12 Macintosh HD -> /

iMac-de-Fernando-Russo:~ Fernando$

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Answer 2

Eric Root

Level 10

684,027 points

Mar 7, 2017 7:48 AM in response to fe_russo

You might want to consider starting a new discussion. Since this one is a couple of years old, less people are likely to look at it. A new post would be much more visible. You can link to this one.

You have the hidden flag. Try the troubleshooting steps posted earlier.

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Answer 3

itsdirty

Level 1

8 points

Mar 22, 2017 2:17 PM in response to mustngpny50

Hello,
I had the same issue but I've resolved it!

First I came here and followed all these step I could find, unfortunately it didn't work.
However, I unplugged the USB cable from my hard drive (rather than from the back of my iMac) and replugged. I then waited a few minutes and it seemed like (just as another user suggested in this thread) that my hard drive was in fact in a sort of "sleep" mode.

It immediately appearedon my desktop and I was able to continue work. I hope this helps G.

Dirty

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Answer 4

Ianparks

Level 1

4 points

Jun 19, 2017 3:38 PM in response to mustngpny50

Problem:

My external drive was not showing up in the finder under Devices, but was showing fine on the desktop and in the disk utility

Solution:

Open the finder and drag the drive from the desktop to the Devices section..... Sorted... Phew 😀

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Answer 5

Roccarox

Level 1

4 points

Oct 2, 2017 12:19 PM in response to mustngpny50

Hello

I had a similar problem, after forcing - shutting down the computer, the external drive did not show up any more on my desktop. Running diskutil list in terminal did show the external drive but I could not unmount it, message error was unable to unmount the drive. Running diskwarrior was not a solution either because the message was, disk not mounted.

What I finally did, was to shut down the computer without extracting the external HD, then plugging the device in a windows computer, when the computer recognizes the drive and you are able to search into the drive, then turn off the computer without extracting the drive. Extract the drive after the computer is switched off.

Turn on the mac without plugging the drive, when desktop is available, plug in the drive again.

It seems the drive stayed hanging in I don´t know what.

I hope it works for you guys.

Regards

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Answer 6

Oct 22, 2017 3:58 PM in response to mustngpny50

This worked for me without losing my data in my external hard drive.

1. In a terminal, I typed diskutil list

2. I confirmed my external hard drive was shown there but not in Finder.

3. I identified which name my hard drive has there. In my case was /dev/disk2

4. I typed:

sudo

hdiutil detach /dev/disk2

5. I entered my admin credentials!

6. After around one minute, it showed my disk was unmounted and ejected! I restarted my mac and plugged my disk in again and it worked!

Hope this helps!

jacob

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Answer 7

Nov 22, 2017 2:43 PM in response to mustngpny50

The best response that I saw in this forum was to use the FREE Onyx software program: https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11582/onyx

I tried all the suggestions listed in this post and Onyx was the solution. When you download the Onyx software for your particular OS X version and the software has automatically 'verified' your Start Up Disk, open the software and then click on 'Utilities' in the menu bar at the top. The second menu that appears has a heading for 'Visibility'. Click on this item and a sub menu with a host of selections appear, one of which is 'Disk' and you can then select the 'trouble ' disk that won't mount and after select 'show'. The trouble disk would then appear on your desktop.

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Answer 8

jsd2

Level 5

6,245 points

Jan 4, 2011 12:44 AM in response to mustngpny50

It sounds as if your external drive volume may have picked up a "hidden" flag. See
http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/invisible.html

To test for this flag, and also to check the access permissions, go to your Utilities folder and open Terminal. Copy-paste the following line into the Terminal window, and type Return.

ls -laeO@ /Volumes

Copy the response and post it back here.

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Answer 9

mustngpny50 Author

Level 1

25 points

Jan 4, 2011 4:52 PM in response to jsd2

Here is the response

Macintosh:~ mustngpny50$ ls -laeO@ /Volumes
total 8
drwxrwxrwt@ 4 root admin hidden 136 Jan 4 18:30 .
com.apple.FinderInfo 32
0: group:everyone deny add file,add_subdirectory,directory_inherit,onlyinherit
drwxrwxr-t 37 root admin - 1326 Nov 21 14:10 ..
drwxr-xr-x 1 mustngpny50 mustngpny50 - 8192 Sep 26 08:37 BOOTCAMP
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin - 1 Jan 4 18:02 Macintosh HD -> /
Macintosh:~ mustngpny50$

Also tried the apple script,

error "System Events got an error: Can’t set disk \"Iomega HDD\" to true." number -10006 from disk "Iomega HDD"

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Answer 10

jsd2

Level 5

6,245 points

Jan 4, 2011 6:10 PM in response to mustngpny50

The external volume ("Iomega HDD", correct?) did not show up in /Volumes at all, indicating that it was not mounted, a different issue than "invisibility". Be sure it is connected and look again at the left pane of Disk Utility - you should normally see a non-indented "drive" icon for each disk drive, with one or more indented "volume" icons (partitions) below it. Mounted volumes will have their "mount points" reported at the bottom of the Disk Utility window. One of my flash USB drives contains a volume named USB2, and looks like this:
.
!http://i55.tinypic.com/28hofpu.jpg!

What do you see in Disk Utility when you connect the external drive? If you see an indented volume icon that is not mounted, can you select it and mount it (DU toolbar or File menu)?

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Answer 11

mustngpny50 Author

Level 1

25 points

Jan 4, 2011 8:00 PM in response to jsd2

Iomega HDD shows up in disk utility. However, the sub level of it is grayed out. I can do a repair disk to this sub level, and it says the disk seems to be ok

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

Try running First Aid on the disk and then retry mounting."

Message was edited by: mustngpny50

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Answer 12

mustngpny50 Author

Level 1

25 points

Jan 4, 2011 8:20 PM in response to mustngpny50

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Answer 13

jsd2

Level 5

6,245 points

Jan 4, 2011 8:57 PM in response to mustngpny50

It's a puzzle, then. It doesn't sound like a hardware issue, but you could still try using different cable connections or seeing if it mounts when connected to a different Mac.

I guess the next step if the data there is important and not backed up anywhere else would then be to try [DiskWarrior|http://www.alsoft.com/diskwarrior/index.html], a stronger but expensive repair utility, and then if unsuccessful next try a data recovery program such as [Data Rescue|http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php] . Perhaps others here can offer further suggestions.

If the data there is just a backup or otherwise non-essential, you could of course just try to re-format (erase) the drive.

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Answer 14

mustngpny50 Author

Level 1

25 points

Jan 4, 2011 9:05 PM in response to jsd2

The external holds all of the music and photos so reformat is out of the question. I'll have to find another mac to try it on to see if it boots on there.

It is getting the proper signal from the mac. If it sits idle for a while it will turn off. The minute I go into disk utility, it starts up and displays in disk utility. If I eject from disk utility, it turns off. I can unplug it and then plug it back in and it will start back up. I don't think there is a problem with the cords or connection.

Thanks for the help so far. Hope to find an answer soon.

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Answer 15

Jan 18, 2011 3:53 PM in response to mustngpny50

Hi,
This is a follow on from the original posters query. My friend gave me his ext HD for me to load it up with notes and stuff from uni.
It was formatted to NTSF so I backed up his files already on the HD and then reformatted the HD to ms-dos. All worked fine and I reloaded his existing files back on with no problem. When I started loading my files onto the HD though it started ok but an error message then appeared saying the process couldn't be completed as some of the files were not writable (or something along those lines).
Anyways, the problem now is that the ext HD does not appear anywhere on my mac...not in finder, disk utility, I also found some command in another forum and copied it into terminal but the only ext HD that shows up is my own. It isn't in the USB device tree in system profiler either.
All that said though, the devices sounds like its running with the only visible difference is a light with the letters R/W etched beside it is no longer lights up.
I have tried it on my macbook as well with the same, worrying results.

For the moment I don't know the name of the ext HD and knowing my friend may not be able to get it, but I'm hoping that won't prevent a fix as I don't think it is a problem with the ext HD!

All help is much appreciated!!!!!!!!!!

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