External Hard Drive icon not working on desktop

My "MAC HD" and an external hard drive I have called "Music" show up on the desktop, but are not clickable.
I cannot move them, open them, or select them in any way.
Also, if I now drop documents onto my desktop, they show up in the finder on my desktop, but not actually on the desktop itself.
Can anyone help ? This happens regularly. My only solution thus far has been to restart.
I don;t want to keep restarting. I would like to know what the problem is and how to solve it permanently.

No.  I just checked and it's not there. . .
BTW, Thanks for your quick response!!!!
The circle blue light rings are illuminated on on the front of the Western Digital External but interestingly enough, the inner ring which is usually as bright as the outer ring is dimmer?  Not sure what that's indicating.  Maybe it's just reflective to the point that it's no connected to the eMac current;y. . .

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