external hard drive shows up on my son's desktop but not mine!

Question

external hard drive shows up on my son's desktop but not mine!

I thought I was going crazy, but have now narrowed it down to a simple problem I think. When I restart my computer and log in as myself, I don't see my external hard drive on the desktop. However, if I open a finder window I do see the drive on the list on the left sidebar and I can access it and all of the files with no issues. I just don't know how to get it to show up on the desktop. And yes, I have the Finder preferences to show hard drives set.

At this point my son's account is logged off. When I log into his account, I see the nice shiny hard drive on his desktop. He has never used this hard drive. If I eject it and then log him off and log back on to my account, I don't see the drive at all. Then I unplug the USB and plug it back in and I see it in the Finder again but not on my desktop. And sure enough, if I log back on as him again, I can see it on his desktop.

Why is the hard drive showing up on the desktop for a user who isn't even logged in, and who has never used this drive?

OS X El Capitan (10.11.1), 12GB RAM, 1TB Hard Drive

Posted on Mar 27, 2016 6:36 AM

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Answer 1

den.thed

Level 10

92,932 points

Mar 27, 2016 8:28 AM in response to Gary Schnettler

You have "External disks" checked in the General tab of Finder Preferences....?

If so, try un-checking and then re-checking it.

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Answer 2

Mar 29, 2016 7:37 PM in response to den.thed

Yes, I have the Finder Preferences set to show External Disks.

How about this question. Let's say that you have a Mac and you have multiple user accounts on it, one for each family member. Some users are logged in and some are logged off. We have a nice external hard drive plugged into the USB port. I then ask every family member to log onto their account one after another and tell me whether they see the external drive on their desktop. Assuming that they all have the Finder set up to show it, should they all see it, or do external drives only connect to one person's account at a time?

And, like in my case, why would my son see it, but I don't?

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Answer 3

den.thed

Level 10

92,932 points

Mar 29, 2016 9:34 PM in response to Gary Schnettler

Gary Schnettler wrote:

Assuming that they all have the Finder set up to show it, should they all see it, or do external drives only connect to one person's account at a time?

That depends on how you have there accounts setup. If they are all setup the same as your son's account, then I would say "Yes" they should all be able to see it.

And, like in my case, why would my son see it, but I don't?

Could be that it is still there, but just accidentally moved out of view.

To find out... do one of the following things.

1. control (right) click on your desktop and select Sort By either Name or Kind.

2. or go to system preferences > display > display tab > click scaled > select a different resolution and then return to the normal resolution.

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