Can't find External Hard Drive on Finder

My external hard drive is no longer visible on the desktop, or in the finder. It appears to still be working, because my sons' iTunes accounts (located on the external) are both working fine. How can I make it appear again?
(Bonus question: This reminds me of the problem with ejecting an iPod, leaving it plugged in to the USB, but then wanting to re-access it. Is there any way to make iTunes find your iPod again without unplugging/replugging the device?)
Message was edited by: cvw2

I'm having a similar...but slightly different problem.
My external drives (both firewire and usb connected) are showing up just fine in Finder...and I'm able to do all the normal things that I can do on them (moving things around, adding things, copying things, re-naming folders, etc..etc..etc).
BUT, what Finder has indeed stopped doing, is it has stopped showing search results for anything that is located IN these external drives.
For instance, my externals are where ALL of my music is kept. I do a lot of dj'ing, and therefore have quite a bit of music digitized (around 400 gigs)...so I've never kept music on my internal hard drive on the laptop. As well, I have another external USB drive that serves as my hard drive for dj'ing. It goes out with me to gigs, and my dj software reads from it (because music that I would actually play out at gigs is only a percentage of my overall music library, and I certainly don't want to be lugging my main music library hard drive around town all the time).
Anyway, at various times, I end up searching for song files, or album folders, or whatever in Finder...and it has (out of the blue) completely stopped "finding" things in the external drives.
Quite baffling.
Has this happened to anyone else....and/or does anyone know how to fix this?
Thank you!!!
cheers.

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Can't find External Hard drive in Finder / Disk Utility.

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Is it a USB drive? Is it detected in another port?
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If you boot to recovery (hold cmd + r) does disk utilities see it there?

Finder can't see external hard drive

All of a sudden, my PowerBook G4 can no longer see my external hard drive (Maxtor 160 GB drive). The drive doesn't appear in the Finder, and it doesn't mount on the desktop. Thus, I have no way of accessing the files on my external hard drive.
I can see the external hard drive when I launch Disk Utility (and also when I launch TechTool Pro), so I know the hard drive and the USB connections are working.
Can someone please help on this?? I've tried unplugging everything and rebooting with no results. Thank you.
PowerBook G4 Titanium 1ghz processor Mac OS X (10.4.2)

By the way, here are my test results from running Disk Utility and Tech Tool Pro. Everything looks clean, I think?
Disk Utility says:
"The volume External Hard Drive appears to be OK.
Mounting Disk.
1 HFS volume checked.
No repairs were necessary."
TechTool Pro volumes test says:
Volume Structures
Thursday, March 29, 2007 6:24:26 PM US/Pacific
Passed
Volume: External Hard Drive
Mount Point: /dev/disk1s3
Format: HFS+ (Mac OS Extended)
Journaling: Enabled
Case-sensitive: No
Created: 03/26/07 01:26:09 AM
Modified: 03/26/07 01:26:09 AM
Capacity: 152.54 GB
Used: 49.81 GB
Available: 102.74 GB
Files: 86,074
Folders: 16,342
Writable: Yes
Ejectable: No
Removable: No
There are a variety of invisible files, settings, and parameters that the Macintosh file system uses to locate files, free disk space, and for other maintenance and management routines. Damage to these critical data structures can result in lost or damaged files and may even necessitate a complete reformat of the volume.
Precheck Structures
This test checks the readability of the various volume structures.
Boot Blocks
This test validates the Boot Blocks portion of the volume. This block of data is created when the volume is blessed.
Boot Blocks <Passed>
Master Directory Block
This test validates the Master Directory Block portion of the volume. This block of data is created when the volume is created and contains important data about the rest of the volume.
Master Directory Block <Passed>
Volume Header
This test validates the Volume Header portion of the volume. This block of data is created when the volume is created and contains important data about the rest of the volume like number of files and folders, and the amount of free space available on the volume.
Volume Header <Passed>
Allocation File (Bitmap)
This test checks the Allocation file. This file indicates which blocks are allocated for use and which blocks are free.
Allocation File (Bitmap) <Passed>
Extents File (B-Tree)
This test checks the Extents file. This file contains the extent data for the entire volume. Extents are the separate components of a fragmented file.
Extents File (B-Tree) <Passed>
Catalog File (B-Tree)
This test checks the Catalog file. This file keeps track of all the files and folders on the volume.
Catalog File (B-Tree) <Passed>
Attributes File
This test checks the Attributes file. This file tracks all of the attributes of each file and folder on a volume. Some attributes include whether the file is locked or not and the last time the volume was backed up.
Attributes File <Passed>
Startup File
This test checks the Startup file. The parameters within this file contain the information used by the computer ROM to determine what program will boot the computer as well as other system-specific aspects.
Startup File <Not Present>
Completed
Passed
Tech Tool Pro File structure says:
File Structure
Thursday, March 29, 2007 6:30:25 PM US/Pacific
Passed
Volume: External Hard Drive
Mount Point: /dev/disk1s3
Format: HFS+ (Mac OS Extended)
Journaling: Enabled
Case-sensitive: No
Created: 03/26/07 01:26:09 AM
Modified: 03/26/07 01:26:09 AM
Capacity: 152.54 GB
Used: 49.81 GB
Available: 102.74 GB
Files: 86,074
Folders: 16,342
Writable: Yes
Ejectable: No
Removable: No
This test checks for file resource corruption on the volume 'External Hard Drive'. If any damaged files are found, TechTool Pro will let you know which files have corrupted resources.
Analyzing File Structures
Passed
I'll let you know if Tech Tool Pro's surface scan of the drive turns anything up (it's running right now - takes several hours to run), but hopefulyl this provides a good starting point into painting a picture of my system...
Thx - Bob

I have a external hard drive connected, Finder will not let me search for files in the external hard drive how do i search in a hard drive

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What are you using to search? You should be able to search any drive in from the Finder. If you're having trouble, try "EasyFind" from the App Store (free). You can search any volumes with it.
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Time Capsule can't backup external hard drives connected to it. Got that.

Hello Apple Support Communities! This is my first post. Hope this finds you all well My first year as an Apple user. I bought a 2-Tb TC and am running my first backup to my MacBook as I write this.
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Questions:
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P/S: Apologee if this has already been discussed before, thus, a link to previous discussion thread would highly be appreciated)
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How do I backup the externel hard drives connected to my MB. I was under the impression that that has already been done, because I've read it somewhere in a discussion that said it's done automatically unless I exclude it from a backup, which I didn't. So it's supposed to backup the external hard drivestoo because I had them connected to my MB the entire time during the backups.
By default an external drive is excluded.. the list is odd.. if I plug a drive into the mac.. it immediately is listed as excluded.
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http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
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The drive is spinning and I was using it the night before I updated my macbook. It is viewable in disk utility but not in finder, and attempts to mount it are thwarted. The problem is literally coincident with updating the mavericks. When I click verify it didn't appear to have any problems but I will retry when I am back at home and report the findings.
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I have not checked on another computer as do not have one available, but that will be my next step.

PowerBook G4 can't see external hard drive

All of a sudden, my PowerBook G4 can no longer see my external hard drive (Maxtor 160 GB drive). The drive doesn't appear in the Finder, and it doesn't mount on the desktop. Thus, I have no way of accessing the files on my external hard drive.
I can see the external hard drive when I launch Disk Utility (and also when I launch TechTool Pro), so I know the hard drive and the USB connections are working.
Can someone please help on this?? I've tried unplugging everything and rebooting with no results. Thank you.
PowerBook G4 Titanium 1ghz processor Mac OS X (10.4.2)
PowerBook G4 Titanium 1ghz processor Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Everything looks clean, as far as I can tell.
Disk Utility says:
"The volume External Hard Drive appears to be OK.
Mounting Disk.
1 HFS volume checked.
No repairs were necessary."
TechTool Pro volumes test says:
Volume Structures
Thursday, March 29, 2007 6:24:26 PM US/Pacific
Passed
Volume: External Hard Drive
Mount Point: /dev/disk1s3
Format: HFS+ (Mac OS Extended)
Journaling: Enabled
Case-sensitive: No
Created: 03/26/07 01:26:09 AM
Modified: 03/26/07 01:26:09 AM
Capacity: 152.54 GB
Used: 49.81 GB
Available: 102.74 GB
Files: 86,074
Folders: 16,342
Writable: Yes
Ejectable: No
Removable: No
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Master Directory Block
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Volume Header
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Extents File (B-Tree)
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Catalog File (B-Tree)
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Catalog File (B-Tree) <Passed>
Attributes File
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Attributes File <Passed>
Startup File
This test checks the Startup file. The parameters within this file contain the information used by the computer ROM to determine what program will boot the computer as well as other system-specific aspects.
Startup File <Not Present>
Completed
Passed
Tech Tool Pro File structure says:
File Structure
Thursday, March 29, 2007 6:30:25 PM US/Pacific
Passed
Volume: External Hard Drive
Mount Point: /dev/disk1s3
Format: HFS+ (Mac OS Extended)
Journaling: Enabled
Case-sensitive: No
Created: 03/26/07 01:26:09 AM
Modified: 03/26/07 01:26:09 AM
Capacity: 152.54 GB
Used: 49.81 GB
Available: 102.74 GB
Files: 86,074
Folders: 16,342
Writable: Yes
Ejectable: No
Removable: No
This test checks for file resource corruption on the volume 'External Hard Drive'. If any damaged files are found, TechTool Pro will let you know which files have corrupted resources.
Analyzing File Structures
Passed
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Thx - Bob

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Can't find External Hard Drive on Finder

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