Disappearing External Drives

2 days in a row now 2 external fire wire drives have disappeared from view on our Intel X-serve. The fire wire drives are used for back-up. These are identical LaCie drives. One is connected to the Firewire 800 port on the back of the X-serve, and the other is connected to the second Firewire 800 port on the first drive. Since early January, each night both drives are ejected, using Apple Remote Desktop on another computer (the server is headless), then powered off, and one drive unplugged and carried off site. In the morning the second drive is brought back-in, connected to the first one, then both are powered up, without problem. Now, for the second day in a row, sometime during the day both firewire drives "dropped off" . The drives do not show up on the Server Monitor application, don't show up on the X-serve's desktop (when viewed using Apple Remote Desktop), and don't show up when the Disk Utility application is run on the server. However, if you run System Profiler on the X-serve, both external firewire drives are shown, with correct information.
Yesterday, I tried to correct the situation by restarting the sever. The result was nothing came up, the Server Monitor application reported the temperatures, fans, power supplies, etc. as all running normal, but also showed that the X-serve had no hard drive (external or internal), no memory, and no network ports. None of the processor status lights on the front of the X-serve came on, and no network services were available on the LAN. Only after I shut the server down for several hours and then restarted it did everything come back up normal (including the firewire drives). I am therefore hesitant to restart the server now. I tried cycling the power to the external drives after they disappeared and it made no difference.
My questions are: (1) Is there a UNIX Terminal command or some other command that might work in mounting the drives, since, if System profiler can see the drives, some other parts of the OS must be able to communicate with the drives, and (2) does anybody have any clues as to what files, caches or whatever may have become corrupted that I can clear/ reset/restore so that this does not keep happening?
Intel X-Serve Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Solved own problem. Somebody in the office, concerned about how even light contact could cause the handle for the internal hard drive bay to pop out, thought it would be a good idea to use the hardware lock. When the hardware lock is on, the system won't recognize external hard drives. Found out the hard way that when the hardware lock is on, and the X-serve is rebooted, it wouldn't recognize any hard drive, or even the internal DVD/CD drive.

Similar Messages

Disappearing External Drive Question

I have a G Drive mini, which I purchased at the Apple Store for my Time Machine Backup drive. When I connect the drive, it appears on the desktop and Time Machine performs a backup. If I leave the drive connected, Time Machine makes additional backups as expected. However, after several hours, the G Drive disappears from my desktop and I occasionally get a message that it was disconnected without proper ejection. What's happening?

Contact the G Drive developer/manufacturer. Sounds like it has some proprietary spindown software built-in that's affecting its performance.

External Drive Disappeared!

My external drive is no longer recognized by my MacBook Pro. The drive is a SimpleTech, and I've used it for 3 years, on prior iMac and present MacBook Pro. Recently, I opened the external drive, and as I clicked on folders, the files in the folders would disappear. I restarted the external drive and computer, and everything was restored and could be opened. Ordered a new backup external, but before I hooked it up and transfered data from old external drive, the external drive disappeared from screen. Now can't get computer to recognize the old external. I can plug new external drive into computer, and it works fine, recognized, and Time Machine is backing up to new external drive. Unfortunately iPhoto library, and some other photos are still on the old external drive.
Armando

Armando,
If you have data you wish to retrieve from the old external drive, I would suggest getting a copy of DiskWarrior and using it to re-build the file system on the drive. This often fixes a drive that is not mounting or failing to transfer files due to directory corruption. Of course, if the drive has a hardware failure there is not much you can do to get to your data.
bd

30GB of space disappears on External Drive after failed DMG copy via USB

I have a 298.1 GB external Western Digital hard drive connected to my iMac by a USB 2.0 cable. It is formatted in NTFS-3G so I can use it with both my PC and Mac. Yesterday in Disk Utility I created a 50GB 256-bit encrypted DMG and told Disk Utility to save it on a folder in my external drive. It got to about 20GB and then my house's power went out. A few hours later when the power came back on, I turned on my computer, and the available space on my external hard drive went down from about 100GB to 68.21GB.
The first thing I thought was that the DMG transfer ended prematurely so I should just find and delete the incomplete DMG from the hard drive. So I went to the folder I saved it in and it was not there. I checked all the folders and I couldn't find any DMG in there. Then I went to the root of the external drive and used Get Info to find the space each folder took up. It adds up to 194.12 GB. So I subtracted 194.12 from 298.1 and got 103.98. If I'm supposed to have 103.98 GB, why do I only have 68.21 GB available? I double and triple checked the size of everything on the disk and I still should have about 30GB more than I do. The 30GB just disappeared.
I tried verifying the disk in Disk Utility and got:
2009-06-14 11:12:33 -0400: Verifying volume “SHADUSMEDIA”
Starting verification tool: 2009-06-14 11:12:33 -0400
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for LOG_LEVEL: 2
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for UBLIO_ENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for PROBE_DISABLED: 0
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for MOUNTRDISKSENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for NFCONV_ENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Read defaults value for ALWAYS_RECOVER: 1
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: ntfs-3g script invoked with command line "/System/Library/Filesystems/ntfs-3g.fs/ntfs-3g.util" "-v" "/dev/disk1s1"
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: Invoking user: MP
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: [Verify] Entering function Verify.
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: ** No NTFS file system checks have been implemented yet.
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: ** Reporting that the volume is fine without checking anything.
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: [Verify] Reporting that the volume is fine, even though that may not be the case (no fs checks performed).
2009-06-14 11:12:35 -0400: [Verify] Returning from function Verify.
Verifying tool completed: 2009-06-14 11:12:42 -0400
So it appears that it's only telling me that it's fine without even checking. I then tried repair disk and got the error message:
2009-06-14 11:14:25 -0400: Verify and Repair volume “SHADUSMEDIA”
Starting repair tool: 2009-06-14 11:14:25 -0400
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for LOG_LEVEL: 2
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for UBLIO_ENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for PROBE_DISABLED: 0
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for MOUNTRDISKSENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for NFCONV_ENABLED: 1
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Read defaults value for ALWAYS_RECOVER: 1
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: ntfs-3g script invoked with command line "/System/Library/Filesystems/ntfs-3g.fs/ntfs-3g.util" "-y" "/dev/disk1s1"
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Invoking user: MP
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: [Repair] Entering function Repair...
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: [Repair] Marking volume to be checked at next Windows boot.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: [Repair] "/usr/local/bin/ntfsfix" "" currently disabled.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: ** /usr/local/bin/ntfsfix has been disabled because of volume corruption issues.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: ** If you still want to try fixing your volume, use /usr/local/bin/ntfsfix from the command line...
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: [Repair] Returning from function Repair with FSUR_INVAL.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400:
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400: Disk Utility stopped repairing “SHADUSMEDIA” because the following error was encountered:
Filesystem verify or repair failed.
2009-06-14 11:14:26 -0400:
I tried restarting my iMac and disconnected and reconnecting the cable and that didn't work. I plugged it into my PC and it still says that all the files on my external drive add up to 194.12 GB. Which still means I should have 103.98 GB of free space instead of 68.21 GB.
So I'm stumped now and not quite sure what to do. Here is the information about the external drive from Disk Utility:
Name : SHADUSMEDIA
Type : Volume
Disk Identifier : disk1s1
Mount Point : /Volumes/SHADUSMEDIA
File System : Windows NT Filesystem (NTFS-3G)
Connection Bus : USB
Device Tree : IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/USB7@1D,7
Writable : Yes
Capacity : 298.1 GB (320,070,288,384 Bytes)
Free Space : 68.3 GB (73,348,239,360 Bytes)
Used : 229.8 GB (246,722,048,512 Bytes)
Number of Files : 145,472
Number of Folders : 0
Owners Enabled : Yes
Can Turn Owners Off : No
Can Repair Permissions : No
Can Be Verified : Yes
Can Be Repaired : Yes
Can Be Formatted : Yes
Bootable : No
Supports Journaling : No
Journaled : No
Disk Number : 1
Partition Number : 1
You can see on there it says I've used 229.8 GB, when I've actually only used 194.12 GB. Here are the specs from System Profiler for my iMac:
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac5,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: IM51.0090.B09
SMC Version: 1.8f2
Serial Number: QP6450GKVUX
I'm running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.6. If you need any more information just ask, I'd really like to get my 30GB back. Thanks in advance.

Can anyone help?

I have multiple libraries on an external drive. Somehow all the iTunes library files i.e. iTunes Library.itl, xml, itdb, Media folder, etc disappeared! Only the music files remain. Now when I start iTunes w/option it can't find any of the old libraries!

Help! I 'm using an old G4 powerbook, Mac OSX 10.5.8, iTunes ver 10. I have multiple iTunes libraries on an external drive. Everything was fine for a while, then all of the iTunes library files, i.e. iTunes Library.itl, xml, itdb, artwork folder, Media folder, etc mysteriously disappeared! Only the music files remain (thank god) So now when I start iTunes w/option key to choose a library, I can't choose any of them because iTunes won't recognize them. Because all the library stuff is missing. So can I re-create the library files? (I don't care if I lose my ratings)
Or should I create a new empty library on the external drive, then manually move all the music files to the Media folder in the new library?
I tried some stupid ideas like creating a new library just to start iTunes, then going into prefs and advanced, then under iTunes Media folder location, selecting the location of the old library on the external, to see if iTunes would then find all the music which is still there, but no workee.
I'm out of ideas, and I searched the archives.
Help! anyone?
Scott

I don't know if this is me adding files to iTunes when the external wasn't connected
it is.
is it OK to just keep deleting that library on the Air?
i wouldn't - at least not until i
mount the external
point iTunes media folder location back to the external via preferences > advanced
consolidate my library via file > library > organize library
The ntfs hasn't seem to be causing any problems, but I've always wanted to know.
in order for your Mac to write to NTFS drives, it needs some help by installing e.g. the NTFS 3G driver. apparently that or something similar is installed on your Mac already. preferably, it would be formatted for Mac but then windows machines would need to have e.g. MacDrive installed to recognize the drive.

My iphoto library disappeared. i am trying to restore my library from time machine -- from an external drive -- but everytime it tries to copy my library it tells me it can't do it because i don't have access to my iphoto library??!!! help!!

My iphoto library inexplicably disappeared! i am panicked but i do back up by time machine to an external drive and also to JustCloud. I am trying to restore my iphoto library from a back up on feb 28, 2014 and it says it's copying but then gives me a message that it can't do it because i "don't have authorization to access iphoto library"?! what does this mean? i really want to get my library back on my mac. Also if anyone knows why this happened or where my photos might be on my computer, i'd appreciate help with that, too.

Thank you Terence for your help. I was able to restore my backup from my time machine ext drive to a new 1tb seagate ext drive. so i felt sort of ok. but yesterday that older ext drive i used for time machine wouldn't open! i called applecare and they trouble shooted with me and said it's probably a goner and data is probably corrupted. it's only a few years old and i'm very careful with it. my husband accidentally dropped my new drive last night -- i know, unbelievable, i was SO upset, poor guy -- but I'm so stressed with all of this. i have 10 years of photos and videos. so now i only have the one newer drive with a backup. i have to buy another one today to backup again so i at least have two backups. i tried to delete a ton of files last night to free up the 30 gb of space i need to get my full library back on my mac. i have 90gb free and deleted 7 years worth of photos i had on picasa that were in my "pictures" folder and also a ton or random photos and videos i had in that same pictures folder and thought that would give me the 30 gb but it hardly freed up any space at all! do you know why that is? all of this stuff is really a pain and really stressful. thank god i did have a backup in the first place but now i am panicked the one i have left will somehow crash. especially after my husband dropped the drive lastnight! it didn't fall far and fell onto a wood floor and seems fine, but after my older ext drive crashed yesterday -- and i lost my entire iphoto library a fewweeks ago off my mac -- i feel cursed. any answers you have would be great. thank you.

I have a Seagate Freeagent 1TB external drive that ejects it's self in the middle of the time machine backup, then disappears and can't be found unless I turn it off and back on again

I have a Seagate Freeagent 1TB external drive that ejects it's self in the middle of the time machine backup, then disappears and can't be found unless I turn it off and back on again. Any ideas?

Hmmm.. sorry to jump in but...
I Wish I had seen this before I got mine.
Mine has been doing this auto eject stuff too.
I think I just plugged it in and TM let me select it but is it possible
I should have reformatted it with DU first, like with all the WD drive problems ?
Is it too late for that ?
Or just try to return it or get rid of it ?
TIA

I just tried to move a folder I had under favorites to an external drive and it disappeared (puff of smoke)

I just tried to move a folder from under favorites (in finder) to an external drive and it disappeared (puff of smoke) - how can I undo this (find it)

Hi..
Not a good idea to move a system folder to an external drive as you have discovered.
Go to Finder > Preferences > Sidebar then reselect the box for the folder that disappeared.

My external drive has disappeared although i shows up in disc utility, and flash drives also do not appear. Any ideas? Have tried restarting but.....

My back-up has stopped as my external drive is shown as "not accessible" and has disappeared from Finder although it shows up in Disc Utility. Similarly my USB flash drive has disappeared. Restarting does not help! Any ideas?

That's good news but maybe run a Repair Disk on it anyway given that it has been somewhat unpredictable.
With Time Machine, one expert helper here named pondini has an extensive knowledge of that software and has prepared a lot of material on it. Here is a link to some of it.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Leopard - External drive disappeared!

Hi, I'm really puzzled here. After 5 days of normal use, the external drive where I do my back ups with Time Machine simply disappeared! It's non to be found!
I rebooted, restarted, disconnected, reconnected...nothing! Now when I connect the drive (a new Iomega 500GB) to my imac or my wife's macbook, the computers can't see it!
Any idea on how to manage this weird situation? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
thanks

Me too! I have a 500GB WD My Book 'Studio Edition'. It is formatted using HFS+ (Journaled). Upon initial hook-up, it showed on my desktop and prompted user action for enabling Time Machine. A few days after, the 'My Book' icon that shows on the desktop after mount does not exist. I've looked at 'Finder Preferences' and all are check marked. at I tried Disk Utility, and it shows 'My Book' as mounted properly. I tried verifying then repairing the HD, and Disk Utility shows my HD as functioning properly. I even went into Script Editor and keyed in some prompts to enable my desktop icons to 'true'. I then disconnected my firewire 800 cable from my iMac as well as the other perepheral's. I then unplugged the HD and the iMac. I let sit overnight to reboot the firewire ports. I then plugged everything back in and the icon still, refused to show in the desktop. I called Apple to report the issue as I feel it's a bug within Time Machine. At the time of my call, they wanted me to speak with their 'Chronic Specialists' (or something of the sort) but they were closed for the night. I plan on calling asap in the AM to report the issue. Time Machine has a minor flaw I'm afraid.
In the meantime, create an alias for your external HD as it will be an easy way to access your drive until the issue is resolved.
-Nic
PS- Some might still be able to access files from the missing external hd. If you can recall a folder title within the hd, finder will retrieve it.
Message was edited by: Anjunafreak

Latest security update and the disappearance of my external drive

I'm sure you're going to tell me that one has nothing to do with the other, but after running the latest security update, the Iomega MiniMax external drive that's been connected to my TiBook for the last 3 years has all of a sudden disappeared from my desktop.
System profiler sees it, Disk Utilities sees it. But there are a couple of things bugging me:
- I'd never paid attention before, but both the System profiler and DU indicated that SMART is not supported
- When I ran DU (off the OSX install disk) to try to repair the HD, I got the following message:
+Invalid node structre+
+Volume check failed+
(these 2 lines in red type)
+Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit+
(this in bold, red type)
+1 HFS volume checked+
+1 volume could not be repaired because of an error+
I think that was in red, too, but can't swear to it, as I'm totally rattled by now.
Now, there is no system on the Iomega, nothing but precious photos and music (since the original HD on this TiBook could only hold 30 Gb), and I'm at a loss as to why all of a sudden I can't access it. Whenever I've come back from a trip, I just plug the external back in (via firewire and usb), and it would just show up, as if nothing had happened.
Any ideas, any help would be, as usual, most appreciated.
Thank you all.
Message was edited by: DesigningWoman

DesigningWoman wrote:
I realize I'm getting 'way off this thread, but wanted to post back. I brought the Iomega to work, plugged it into my iMac and… nothing. Running DU gave me the same results as posted above. Then, for want of a better idea, I pulled out the install disk for the iMac, started up off that and ran DU.
Guess what? It went through its verifications, came up with problems and then proceeded to repair the external. And that wonderful little orange icon was there on my desktop at startup!
There shouldn't be any difference; my guess is it just happened to pick that time to mount. Sometimes a HD with issues will not mount 10+ times in a row, then, for whatever reason, it does on the eleventh try.
There's a new folder in the Iomega now, called "lost+found", weighing in at a little over a Mb and full of files ending with ".nib". Any idea what those are and if I need to keep them?
Hmmm, Google search turns up this from wiki:
Interface Builder is a software development application for Apple's Mac OS X operating system. It is part of Xcode (formerly Project Builder), the Apple Developer Connection developer's toolset. Interface Builder allows Cocoa and Carbon developers to create interfaces for applications using a graphical user interface. The resulting interface is stored as a .nib file, short for NeXT Interface Builder, or more recently, as a .xib file.
Do you use Xcode?
Another hit mentions iPhone, and another Corel. Don't know what to make of it in your case. Can you open any of the files? Any have same name as your data? Creation dates?
I shall now proceed to back up before reformatting.
Good plan.
And check out the cost of a replacement here (they're a good bit higher than in the States.
Ask yourself what your data is worth, and after it's gone, what you would have spent to have retained it. My guess is the answer would be a lot more than the cost of a HD.
Do I want a SATA?
Nope, TiBook doesn't have that interface.
I liked this model because it also worked as a hub… There are so many flavors out there now!
Indeed.
er, ahem, that's a sheepish "yes".
'Nuff said.
A while back, thanks to you and other forum members, I'd gathered up the courage to swap out the original HD for the biggest one the PB could take, and had always meant to to a "backward" backup of the stuff that was on the external — or copying photos onto CDs. Needless to say, the task got put off until this scare. Won't be doing that again.
I considered myself "lucky" the first time I lost data, as it wasn't too, too important, but it taught me a lesson I've never forgotten.
So, once again, thanks for the hand-holding (you had also talked me through/encouraged me to deal with the tight hinges on the TiBook).
You're welcome. Together with RAM and HD, that was the best thing I ever did for my TiBook.
Love this forum!
We aims to please!

If I drag a external drive from devices to favorites, it disappears

Whenever I plug in an external drive or USB drive it shows up in Devices, as usual. But if I drag it into the Favorites section, it disappears, and there is no way for me to access the files inside. The mac still recognizes the device but it is not accessable in finder. Even if I unplug it and replug it it still does not show up again. Even rebooting does nothing. Call me stupid, but what did I do? How can I access my files again?

You could try Data Rescue from Prosoft, but since you didn't have it installed prior to reformatting it most likely won't work. Since you reformatted, your best option would be professional data recovery services. None of which are cheap. I'd recommend OnTrack.

Why does my external drive disappear from my desktop?

I am switching from PC to Mac. I have 2 externaldrives. Both have been formatted in FAT 32 by the MAC. When I plug them in the desktop and finder see them, then with both of them they have disappeared from the desktop and from finder. Still can be seen in disk utility and system profiler. How can I find them and why does this happen?

If you daisy chained then try without. May not be enough power to handle both at sme time. Other than that read some info:
1. Shut-down your Mac, and unplug the power cord
2. Turn the power off on your external FireWire devices
3. Unplug the FireWire devices from the Mac
4. Wait for 5 min.
5. Plug the power cord to your Mac only
6. For PPC Macs: Restart the Mac while holding the Option-Apple-O-F, and keep holding until you get the ">" prompt, then release the keys
7. At the ">" prompt type:
      reset-nvram and hit the Return key
      set-defaults and hit the Return key
      reset-all and hit the Return key
the last command will restart your mac
8. Shut down your Mac
9. Connect all your FireWire devices to the Mac and turn them on
10. Restart your Mac.
All your FireWire devices should reapear, if not repeat the procedure
How to avoid the issue :
The only really proven way to avoid burning up a FireWire port is to connect all devices and to turn them on PRIOR turning on the Mac. Likely, one must unplug them and turn them off AFTER the Mac has been turned off. If you need to connect another device, then you're on for a shutdown of your machine...  It's a tad annoying but it guarantees that the FW ports won't be damaged.  Be careful when using self powered devices such as webcams, iPods, hard drives or hubs, as they can destroy the port pretty easily. Another thing is to avoid daisy-chaining hard drives.
When the FW port doesn't respond anymore :
In this case, peripherals won't be mounted upon plugging, and won't be displayed in Apple's System Profiler. The self powered devices will still be fed by the port, but won't respond either.  It happens that the PHY just hangs after a surge or a random problem. Once hung, the port will not respond any longer, it is possible to reset the component by going through the following steps :
1° boot the PPC mac in Open Firmware by holding [ Apple key - Option - O - F ] after the startup chime.  2° you'll get to a command prompt. the keyboard mapping will be QWERTY, so pay attention when you type the following :  RESET-NVRAM (enter)  RESET-ALL (enter)  3° Now the mac should restart itself and the port should function properly again.  If it still doesn't work, then it means that the PHY is damaged.
http://www.hardmac.com/articles/16/
From Kappy post:
922 is only used in dual drive cases to provide a "build-in firmware RAID support"
912 or 912+ is FW800, the "+" means USB2
911 is FW400
924 adds eSATA support along with FW400/800
MacSales, OWC Tech Support library is where I would go first, as they do tend to have or links to, firmware updates for Oxford.
From Wiebetech:
I just upgraded my Mac OS, and now I'm having trouble with my FireWire device. What can I do?
A: With nearly every OS update Apple releases, some external drives are not recognized after the update. The typical symptom is that the device will not mount but the volume is visible and grayed out in Disk Utility. This means that the device is working properly, but the OS does not recognize the volume as mountable. Sometimes the drive does not show up at all.
The first thing to do is to see if repairing Permissions with Apple's Disk Utility First Aid feature solves the problem. If not, try repairing the disk with First Aid. Another possible solution is to zap the PRAM. This is done with a keyboard command while rebooting. Restart your computer and hold down the Command, Option, P and R keys. Consult the Apple web site for details.
If this does not work, then try pushing the PMMU reset button on the logic board. Consult the Apple web site for locations of the button for your Mac. If the drive still does not show up, shut down, disconnect all peripheral devices, and boot from the Mac OS Installation CD. The later the OS version, the better. Do not reinstall the OS, but when the Installer is loaded up and ready to begin, go to the File menu and use the Disk Utility program. Connect the drive that is having problems, then start the Disk Utility application. If you see the external drive and it is not grayed out, you know the drive is okay. Run Disk First Aid on it anyway. Then run it on your internal boot drive while you are at it. When done, unmount the external drive and UNPLUG it! Then restart the Mac.
When the Mac has restarted and is running on the internal boot drive, reconnect the external drive.

Disappearing external Firewire drive.

Hi friends.
My wife's mini has a LaCie external firewire drive attached. She uses it with Backup and it just suddenly disappeared.
It appears to be on and working- but not showing up on her desktop. Is there a way on restart-- to force her mini to look for peripherals it's not seeing? I always get such great help on this forum. Thanks in advance. Dan

I'm curious if/how that link worked out for you. I have been observing problems with Firewire/USB for the past month or more that I allowed my clients to upgrade to 10.4.9 and 10.4.10.
I am finally starting to cross over into the belief that an update within 10.4.9/10.4.10 caused a failure with external Firewire drives -- now I will include USB drives in that belief. I was skeptical for a long while but the coincidences don't line up.
My guess is that Apple updated the Firewire/USB bridge -- perhaps they even made it more efficient. The cost may be that various external drive enclosure manufacturers who coexisted (or even accommodated) Apple's previous bridge, now fail. I don't know if you recall the 10.3.x update that took down Firewires for quite some time to come. The only solution that worked for me then was to boot into OS 9, mount the drive there, and then restart in OS X. A very round-about solution.
So far, I have observed the following failures in the past couple months:
Powerbook G4 1.4Ghz (or so): failed USB LaCie hard drive, no clicking/non-harddrive malfunction
Mac Pro -- Intel Core Duo: two failed Firewire enclosures (Nexstar Vantecs). The drives inside were perfect but the enclosures ceased functioning first on an iMac G5 and then continued to disappear on a Mac Pro tower.
One of these enclosures had also disappeared from a new iMac - Intel. I could get the thing to mount and then it would disappear overnight -- my thought is that perhaps the drives don't remount after sleep? I did not do extensive tests.
I have had another client on an as-of-yet-unknown machine (purchased in last couple years) lose a LaCie Firewire drive... no clicks or hardware failure indications. I will investigate this week.
I had yet another client lose two LaCie drives connected to a Dual 1.0 Ghz G4 Tower. One LaCie drive enclosure seemed to fail completely at Firewire 800 speed and transfer slowly but reliably when dumbed down to Firewire 400. The other LaCie was unreadable even when I transferred the drive to another enclosure. I am still investigating.
On a Mac Mini (Intel) new enclosures from PPA Galaxy Metal Gear would not daisy chain without disappearing.
I admit that I don't want to believe that the recent OS updates could have caused this -- especially after the debacle of 10.3.x. But it is definitely possible and not altogether unlikely. Consider this discussion about a LaCie firmware update tool meant to make them compatible: http://lovemac.org/2007/04/28/external-lacie-firewire-disappeared-from-the-deskh elp/
Not having attempted the Firmware update yet myself, I cannot vouch for it. Firmware updates are not to be taken lightly but they are just the sort of thing that might make the Firewire/USB bridge in the LaCie's compatible with Apple's updates/fixes. Of course, that leaves the other vendors' drives high-and-dry.
Usually, Apple or Apple defenders like to say that the vendors should be writing perfect code and it's not Apple's fault if they optimize or fix code which breaks the vendors' equipment. I think this is a ridiculous argument. Granted, in our legal system, Apple would not usually be obliged to accommodate "faulty" code (even if they might happen to have been the originators of it). But what is the true definition of faulty code? In the realm of technology and computers, there are likely countless kludges and fixes and patches. The whole idea and goal is FUNCTION (ideally). Optimizing or standardizing code is important of course. It means that future authors can rely on the accuracy of the previous authors. But the world -- especially the tech world -- stands to gain more from consistency... from the language of the vernacular. If all the equipment and all the operating systems up to a point have deigned to speak in a consistent kind of pidgin, then it doesn't make complete sense to "fix" it to be some more "accurate" or "refined" grammar. Language works because it's locally consistent, not because it's accurate to some holy grail of grammar.
Specifically: Apple can't switch code midstream and say "oh, I made the code 'accurate,' not my fault if your stuff was built on bad code." Up until that point THEIR stuff was built on "bad" code too! It's a ridiculous argument but what can you do.
At this point, I imagine that Apple attempted to fix something with 10.4.9 and 10.4.10 that it had tried to fix before with OS 10.3.X. Instead, I believe it created an intermittent failure in Firewire/USB drives that leaves the drives inoperable as often as unmountable. It's just a theory based on having seen enough updates and upgrades have a really bad effect. I think people think we live in some future where we can trust our technology and tech manufacturers to get things right (or at least get things right often enough). Surely they're doing the best they can...no doubt.
I'm a little frustrated I should ramp down my expectations. I know. It's not like this is 2020 or 2050. It's really only 2007.
Good luck to us all.

FINDER disappears, along with desktop icons, when I plug in external drive

Hello, All:
FINDER disappears, along with desktop icons, when I plug in an external memory card from my Nikon camera. This also happens regardless of which USB port I plug it in to. It didn't happen when I installed Leopard two weeks ago, but happens all the time now.
Interestingly, the desktop icons (hard drives and files) DO show up when I open any software program and try to open up a file. The hard drives and files show up in the Open File windows.
Thank you,
Jon

THANK YOU! I've been having the same problem, and the solution you linked to worked perfectly for me. Somehow, my computer's sharing name had been deleted. Once I put that back in the file sharing preference I was able to reconnect my external drive without all Hades breaking loose.
This problem came on the heels of an aborted attempt to use a new Time Capsule (not ready for prime time) which I had to drive 50 miles to take back and replace with a new WD My Book -and I was afraid I was going to have to repeat the trip to take it back as well.

Disappearing External Drives

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