External Drives not on Desktop

I have a Power Mac G4 running on 10.5.7.
2 days ago, when I powered up, one of my Lacie drives (firewire) and my ipod (USB) no longer appeared on the desktop. They are both still interfacing, because the Lacie powers up and the ipod goes into charge mode. When I look at the profiler I see the Lacie shown as "unrecognized." The ipod is not showing in profiler at all.
I've done all the obvious switching cables, power sources, inputs, etc.
Nothing has changed, as far as I know. The only weird thing that was happening was the power up gong sounded a little distorted for about 3 days prior.
Any suggestions? Thanks, Karen

Thought you could use this info about getting FireWire to work! First, you should always Repair Permissions in Disk Utility before and after any update; I would do that now. If you installed your update with FireWire plugged in, your Mac may not recognize it anymore.
Try resetting your FireWire ports by disconnecting all FW devices, shut down your Mac and unplug it from AC power (wall socket) for 30 minutes. plug it back in and try FW.
If that didn't work, download the combo update from this site (yours may be corrupt), not Software Update, disconnect all firewire + USB devices except keyboard + mouse, Repair Permissions, re-install update, Repair Permissions again + try.
If that still didn't get it Zap the PRAM. While restarting Mac hold down the following key combo Command-Option-P-R. Keep holding those keys down till you hear the second start-up chime, then release.
For those of you with Macs that are not PowerBooks or iBooks, a bad internal PRAM battery can cause FireWire to not be recognized, so make sure it's good! Also, here is
Apple KB HT1317 on getting FireWire to work.
Here's another
Fw Faq.
DALE
P.S. With the startup gong acting up, that PRAM battery may be going out. Next post will help you with that.

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USB External drive not showing in Finder, or on Desktop

I have two USB external drives from the same manufacturer. One is for regular storage, the second is for Time Machine and movies.
The first one shows everywhere, on the desktop, in finder and in Disk Utility.
The second drive shows in Disk Utility only. However, it is functioning fine with Time Machine. So it is mounted. I have tried several repairs, and it reports no fault found. So it is certainly functioning correctly, but a setting or error in the operating system is not allowing it to be viewed in finder, or on the desktop.
Any suggestions.

Correction: Title should be Firewire External drive not showing in Finder, or on Desktop.

Internal / External drives not mounting.

Hi All,
I have a Mac Pro Early 2008 that has suddenly developed the problem of not showing any of the three internal hard drives or any of the connected external drives on the desktop. The system drive does appear. This is a recent development but did not happen immediately after installing 10.6.
Potentially related, I can not shut down (also recent) without forcing to with the power button. Also takes an extremely long time to power up. Five minutes or so.
So far I have attempted repairing permissions, restart, resetting the SMC, and none of these have fixed the problem. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Just some of my experiences:
Checkmark got lost in Finder's Pref dialog for "show drives" "show external drives"
External drives got corrupted since I turned the power off the very second the drive-symbol disappeared from my desktop = I learnt that the drive is still doing some cleanup though it does not show anymore. So give it another 30 seconds before disconnecting its power supply
Luckily I had a backup since I always run TWO backupdrives parallel as a kind of mirror. So I reformated the corrupted drive and had the same problem. Somewhere in this forum I found that a slight change in size forces Apple's drive-utility to REALLY clean up everything from scratch. So I change the partition sizes by 1MB ... now no problem anymore.
My internal drive with OSX 10.6 has also been starting very slowly. I found out that removing as many as possible caches incl. the image OSX saves whenever you close the MacBook helps. Some of that cleanup was done using TinkerTool Systems and Onyx. Others was done manually. I also deleted many preference and .plist files like those of safari or preview
Finally I deleted all stuff which might initiate time-consuming internal communication ... no automatic check for updates. All programs needing "SIMBL" and Bonjour had to go. I had forgotten some test-entries in my networks systemprefs which made the system look for network connections. It goes without saying that any "connect automatically at startup" should go as well. I also had the spotlight index redone. Microsoft's Entourage Database was also checked and compressed. At the end I checked everything with Apple's disk-utility, DiskWarrior and Onyx. Now I am back at about 50 seconds for start-up
By the way: I deleted all 20 or so RSS-feeds and removed all widgets which depend on external information (like weather, airport departure). Funny enough - since then I also have no hang-ups experienced, whenever Safari is open. Since all these little workers update in different intervals I suspect that sometimes, their updating adds up and block the MacBook for 1 Minute or so.

I have my Time Machine on an external drive (not connected to Airport Extreme) and I have an external HD attached to airport extreme. Is it possible to have Time Machine backUp computer HD AND external HD connected to Airport Extreme. How?

I have my Time Machine on an external drive (not connected to Airport Extreme) and I have an external HD attached to airport extreme. Is it possible to have Time Machine backUp computer HD AND external HD connected to Airport Extreme. How?

Is it possible to have Time Machine backUp computer HD AND external HD connected to Airport Extreme.
Sorry, but no.
Time Machine will backup your Mac, but not the hard drive attached to the AirPort Extreme.
Time Machine will back up a hard drive only if it is attached directly to your Mac via USB or FireWire.

Is their another way like to use my time capsule as an external drive not using time machine?thanks

is their another way like to use my time capsule as an external drive not using time machine?thanks

You do not have to use Time Machine.. but the TC is hardly suitable for a NAS.. it has no means to back itself up and is relatively slow. Still that is up to you..
CCC or Superduper are good backup softwares .. and there are a number of others.

External drive not showing up on desktop

I have an external hard drive (2T Newertech ministack). We had a power outage the other day. Even though the drive is on it no longer appears on the desktop. I went to Disk Utility and see if it could be repaired but the drive is not even showing up there. Does this mean the ministack was fried by the outage or is there another way I can save it? And yes, the finder preferences are on for external drives to show up on desktop.

It's not likely it would be fried if it's connected to a UPS because then it would not lose power and crash. Have you tried disconnecting the device from the computer, rebooting the computer, then reconnecting the device?
Since you have another Mac try directly connecting the device to it and using Disk Utility to repair the drive. Then give it a try on the other computer.

External hard drives not on desktop

None of my external hard drives are showing up on the desktop. I can see them in finder and disk utilities so the card is working correctly. Any suggestions?
mac pro quad 10.6.7, 5 external drives.
Thanks

Nope, tried already that (default). I got a couple of external HDDs (WD 1 TB, WD 500 GB) loaded with tons of personal data, used to run flawlessly but after Lion seems it won't read them. They do show grayed (not mounted) on the Disk Utility but nothing on the Finder windows. I can read/write and use my data on any other computer, PC, Laptop, Mac Book, etc but not mine. Only diff: I installed Lion.
Help needed please!

External Raid drives not on desktop

I have just installed OS X and now my external SoftRaid Drives do not show up on the desktop. Any suggestions on how to get these to show up. I have contacted SoftRaid and they are trying to help but no luck so far.
These drives worked fine with Tiger but not after installation of OS X

do you see those drives in Finder? type shiftcommandG in Finder and enter
/Volumes in the popup. Do you see the drives listed in /Volumes? Also, do they show up in the sidebar?
Also, make sure that external drives are set to show up on the desktop in Finder preferences.
Message was edited by: V.K.

External Drive not mounting on Desktop but visible on sidebar

I have an external drive Iomega 1T that appears on the destop on Snow Leopard and all is perfect with it, but not showing on the destop in Lion (installed on another internal), it shows up on the sidebar and can access it from there without issues. Disk utilities shows it and can repair permissions and all but can't mount on desktop, my only option there is to unmount it, but is not even showing up on desktop to unmount it.
Do I need to reformat it to mount on desktop? Any help is appreciated.

A little bit, yes. What got me a little confused was that all of my 3 internal drives showed up, and I thought that by selecting it to appear on the sidebar would be visible on the desktop. Thanks again, Lion is very snappy on my early 2008 8 core 2.8, like having a new Mac .

External drives not showing on desktop

I have a situation where my external drives are not showing up on my desktop and need additional help on figuring out the problem.
So far I have read the suggestions to Repair permissions in Disk Utility. However, the drives that aren't showing on the desktop are not showing in Disk Utility either.
I tried downloading the 10.4.4 Combo Update but upon trying to install it, I am being told that neither my system drive nor my 2nd, internal drive will accept it (red explaination points on both drive icons).
I tried unplugging all firewire and USB devices and then unplugging AC power. Left computer shut down for 4 hours. No fix.
Tried zapping P-Ram. No fix.
Tried my external drives on a G4 computer at work (running OS 10.3). Worked fine.
Swapped out fire wire cables. Nothing.
Ran Tech Tool pro. Tests confirm that fire wire drivers are working properly. Passed. I know that this test only checks for drivers and not whether the info is being passed through the connectors.
The only thing I didn't try was replacing the battery. However, my clock and all other battery dependent items are working just fine and not showing any spuratic signs of malfunction.
The two external drives I am using are a Western Digital and a one Touch Maxtor. The Maxtors, (so I've read on this thread) have been known to show some signs of inconsistent behavior. However, I've had no issues with it up to this point and I've had it for over two years.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks to all of you who have already posted some possible fixes. I appreciate it greatly.
Thanks.
Steve
Power Mac, G5 Mac OS X (10.4.10) 2.5 GIGS RAM, Dual processor

DP
Thanks. Are you talking about booting from my external drives?
Yeah, I haven't actually booted from any of my external drives as they do not have any system software on them to boot from.
If you have a good backup procedure, I'd love to hear it as I'm always documenting and using new ways to backup my info.
From here, I plan on going in and running Tech Tool on my two external drives, (now that the computer is regognizing them) to see what I can find out. My guess is that my firewire ports or drivers on the G5 may have gotten a little mixed up when last Thursdays lightning strike cut the power to the neighborhood. However, I do have a battery backup/ surge protection system that's been in place for about a year. It's been working great so the lightning strike may not be the problem. It was a pretty harsh one, though. After looking over the backup system, nothing looks fried or damaged in any way. Still working fine.
As far as not relying on just one drive, I'm heading into town and picking up a third drive that will back up what's on my existing two externals. This will then be kept safely stored away. By the way, what does IMHO mean? I'm a little rusty on my computer accronyms.
Thanks again!
Back to work.
Steve
Power Mac, G5 Mac OS X (10.4.10)
Power Mac, G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

External hard drive not on desktop

niel and limnos began helping me with this problem last week but it solved itself when i left my laptop shut down overnight. now the problem is back.
until today the external drive turned up in disk utility and was verified. now it does not show up anywhere. i have a maxtor and western, once they both showed up - which is what i need because i want to transfer all files on the western to the maxtor - most of the time, only one showed up. i disconnected one thinking that 2 connected external hard drives might demanded too much from the computer. but now, with only one connected for 2 days, no hard drive shows up anywhere. i tried shut down, restart, no hard drive. please help.

Do you repair permissions & reboot after every opdate?
At this point I think you should get Applejack...
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15667/applejack
After installing, reboot holding down CMD+s, (+s), then when the DOS like prompt shows, type in...
applejack AUTO
Then let it do all 5 of it's things.
At least it'll eliminate some questions if it doesn't fix it.
The 6 things it does are...
Correct any Disk problems.
Repair Permissions.
Clear out Cache Files.
Repair/check several plist files.
Dump the VM files for a fresh start.
Trash old Log files.
First reboot will be slower, sometimes 2 or 3 restarts will be required for full benefit... my guess is files relying upon other files relying upon other files!
Disconnect the USB cable from any Uninterruptible Power Supply so the system doesn't shut down in the middle of the process.

Desktop wallpaper on external drive not retained after reboot

Hi all,
On rebooting my Late '12 iMac, the desktop wallpaper always reverts back to the default Yosemite one. The wallpaper is stored in a folder on my USB 3.0 ext drive, and when the desktop appears the icon is there for the external drive and ai can browse and re-set the wallpaper.
Also, possibly related, I have an icon for Steam on my Dock, which becomes a question mark upon reboot as if Yosemite can no longer find the app. Steam is also stored externally. However like above, I can click the icon and the Mac is able to see and launch steam no problems, and the question mark then reverts back to the steam icon.
The iMac has been upgraded by myself so that internal drive is a Samsung Evo 840 SSD. As crazy as it sounds I almost think that the Mac is booting (which takes around 6 seconds from grey Apple to logon screen) faster than it is reading the external drive. But what is weirder is that the logon screen has a blurred version of the correct wallpaper behind it, which flicks the default Yosemite one when I login.
Any ideas?

dannytheone wrote:
On rebooting my Late '12 iMac, the desktop wallpaper always reverts back to the default Yosemite one. The wallpaper is stored in a folder on myly, USB 3.0 ext drive, and when the desktop appears the icon is there for the external drive and ai can browse and re-set the wallpaper.
Also, possibly related, I have an icon for Steam on my Dock, which becomes a question mark upon reboot as if Yosemite can no longer find the app. Steam is also stored externally. However like above, I can click the icon and the Mac is able to see and launch steam no problems, and the question mark then reverts back to the steam icon.
The iMac has been upgraded by myself so that internal drive is a Samsung Evo 840 SSD. As crazy as it sounds I almost think that the Mac is booting (which takes around 6 seconds from grey Apple to logon screen) faster than it is reading the external drive. But what is weirder is that the logon screen has a blurred version of the correct wallpaper behind it, which flicks the default Yosemite one when I login.
Any ideas?
It doesn't actually sound crazy, except for the thing with the blurred wallpaper which does sound odd. The easy way to test it would be to move your preferred wallpaper to your boot drive to see if it loads at boot. I'm assuming it will. In my limited testing of Yosemite, the wallpaper choice sticks, as it should, but it's on my boot drive.
Have you noticed if the problem of drives being improperly ejected when system wakes from sleep has been corrected in Yosemite?

Why does the external drive not show up on the desktop.

My wife has a G5 (iSight). When we turn on the external drive it does not mount. We have tried restarting the iMac with the external drive on and it still does not show up. What is the problem and what is the fix?
Thanks

Is it by chance a WD MyBook? They are known for problems like that. Could be the cable -- try a different one. Or it could be the Firewire port on the computer. Try a different port on the computer or on the external, if it has one. Have a look at this Apple article with other troubleshooting steps.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1151
Message was edited by: WZZZ

Some External Drives not showing up on Desktop

I have 3 external drives hooked up to my Macbook for backup; a 120 GB Firewire external hard drive (Mac formatted), an 80 GB USB 2 external hard drive (Dos formatted), and a 256 MB Thumb Drive (Mac formatted).
Here's the problem. Sometimes after a restart all 3 drives show on the Desktop. Other times after a restart, the 120 GB and the 80 GB will show on the desktop. The 256 MB is nowhere to be seen and thus unusable for backup. And other times after a restart, the 120 GB and the 256 MB will show but the 80 GB is nowhere in sight and thus unusable.
How can I get all 3 drives to always show up on the desktop after restarts?

Hi Alan,
Have you shut down your Mac and disconnected your firewire cables from both ends and let it sit about ten minutes then reconnect and try. Also, it is important to disconnect the AC power to your Mac, to reset the FireWire port(s).
-mj
[email protected]

External drive not working on iMac, but works on Macbook Pro

I have read a few different threads relating to this question, with no real luck of a permanent solution.
I have an external drive that works perfectly on my Macbook Pro. My new iMac will not show the drive though (both with the current software).
The drive itself shows a power light and appears to be running/powered by the USB port.
I have tried several ports.
It does not show in Disk Utility.
The option in settings is set to show the drive in finder and on the desktop (I have checked this).
I have tried restarting the iMac.
I have also had this problem after the iMac has been turned off overnight, and turned on in the morning (and then plugging the drive in after powering on).
I resolved this issue once by turning off the iMac, removing the power cord for a few minutes, and powering it up again.
I don't think it should be something I have to do every time I would like to use the drive though - It would be very irritating if I had to do that every time.
Any advice or options here?
The iMac has only been used since Christmas day, 2014 - and has had this problem since that day (in which i solved it by the turn off/unplug thing).
Sorry, I am aware this question has been asked a lot. I haven't come across anything that is giving me a long-term solution to this problem.
Happy new year!

Some USB-powered drives are just crappy. They require too much current from the USB and cause the bus to fail or the bus can't provide enough power for it to fully spin up. You can often hear or feel them clicking periodically (like once a second) as they are trying to spin up.
If this is the case, a powered Hub, external power supply, or Y-cable will be necessary to consistently use the drive.

External Drives not on Desktop

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