external hard drives not showing up in Finder sidebar

I had the same issue, went to preferences options and added them. The problem wasnt that...actually, once you have selected them in Preferences, Sidebar, Devices...Then you go to Finder, and right next to the Devices you pass the mouse and a "show" sign will show up. Click and they all apear again.

First it looks like this:

Then it looks like this:

I hope this helps out.

Rgds,

There are three ways to hide a file, folder or volume (partition) on a mac. You may have some combination of these set accidentally.

1. Hide a file from a listing (ls -l) in the terminal. since you can see it in the terminal, this is not you problem

sudo chflags hidden /Volumes/SD200

2. Hide the icon from the desktop. You did not say if it was on the desktop

sudo SetFile -a V /Volumes/SD200

3. Hide it from the sidebar in the finder--- this is probably your problem

right click or control click on item and select hide

You can set your Finder preferences to show the hard drives on the Desktop:

I'm not sue why they're not showing up in the Sidebar, however... all of mine do.

Clinton

You're welcome.

Clinton

Hey lcarroll81, I had the same issue where nothing was showing under 'devices' in my sidebar.

If you roll over the 'devices' label in the sidebar, it will show you a text button to show/hide the devices. A terrible design decision in my opinion.

Logically, .....when anyone plugs in a HD / mem stick, it SHOULD pop up on your desktop.

its not default on mountain Lion, but should be. 😐

Yes, I know other places to find it,.......but myself and most want HD to pop on desktop to quick drag N' drops. 😊

thank you for this post: couldn't find the drive in finder, despite repeated efforts, and your explanation resolved the issue.

Mac uses a FAT 32 file system. So, you probably could format ur HD in Fat 32 and it will then be recognised..!!

This simple solution is another one to try.

In the Finder menubar:

Go > Computer

Drag the volume icons into the sidebar under DEVICES

I lost one of my external disks from the sidebar, I couldn't drag it back in and didn't want it on the desktop.

I found in Finder Preferences, Sidebar, the External disks box only had a dash. I clicked the box to change it to a tick and the disk appeared back in my sidebar.

Look in Finder Preferences, click on Sidebar and under Devices make sure External discs is ticked.

You, like so many mac gurus, are a genius. It worked exactly as you wrote t.

You, like so many mac gurus, are a genius. It worked exactly as you wrote t.

This resolved the same issue as above. I suspect I had accidentally dragged my disk drive out of Finder before, but now it's back!

You rock. And you're right - it IS a terrible design decision. Thank you for posting this valuable tidbit!