Hard drive does not show up in desktop on mac mini

Click on Finder or on your desktop so that Finder is displayed on the menu bar and open Finder Preferences.

1. Select the General tab and check the boxes for Hard Disks, External Disk, etc...

2. Select the Sidebar tab and do th samething.

same thing is happening to me with 2 different flash drives.

and it's not related to the Finder prefs. The drives used to show on my 3 different computers, 10.5.8, 10.6, 10.8.5 and I know the cards are not damaged, because I put them into a PC and Kinkos' printer 2 days ago, and they were able to read them.

I also used disk utility, and they do not show up there either.....

anybody has any idea?

Michel

What OSX version?

Are you plugging it directly into a USB port on the Mac?

What shows under USB in System Report?

Does the USB ports recognize standard HDs?

all the version were listed above for 3 separate computer I tried the chip onto...( 10.5.8, 10.6, 10.8.5)

all 3 computers have USB port which I am using

1- is a flash card that I put into a card reader which plugs into USB port of all 3 computer.

I further put the flash card into my epson printer that also has a Flash card reader..... but the printer window says: "cannot recognize the memory card or stick..."

2- the other memory device is a USB Keychain memory stick. At one point when I plugged it into my 10.6 machine, it popped up on the desktop and was able to copy some files to it. I ejected it, and re-inserted it a 2nd time to test it, and it would NOT show up on desktop again.

I do not have any external USB HD only Fire wire 400-800.

not sure what system report you are refering to!

Some older USB card readers are not compatible with some Macs/OSX version.

For this problem " I ejected it, and re-inserted it a 2nd time to test it, and it would NOT show up on desktop again." I suspect a poor connection of faulty card that works some times.