External Hard Disk not showing up on Finder

Hi
My HP Pocket Media Drive (USB), when plugged into my MacBook, does not show up on the Finder, even though it shows up on System Profiler. It only shows up on Disk Utility in certain occasions (such as after shutting down and starting up again). I have checked my Finder preferences, that external hard drives are shown on desktop.
I have tried resetting my PRAM and SMC too, but I still can't access the hard disk.
Any help will be appreciated.

Ian Sen wrote:
I get the following message in a window:
“connecting to server: resolving alias to… (my itunes folder on the external disk).”
On the chance that your Mac has a phantom folder in its Volumes folder, with that external drive not mounted, invoke the Finder menu option Go > Go to Folder. Enter "/Volumes" (without the quotes) in the field and click "Go". In the resulting window if you see anything with a name that resembles your external drive, trash it.
Anyone know how I can have the external hard disk automatically mount onto my desktop (and thereby bypass the need for several click-thru’s via the finder window)?
Once you're able to mount that external drive, open the Accounts panel of System Preferences and click on the lock in the corner to authenticate if needed. Select your account on the left, then the "Login Items" tab. Drag the mounted disk icon into the window then close System Preferences. That disk should now mount when you log in. A Finder window will open, but you can close that manually. If that bothers you sufficiently, if you search these discussion groups you may be able to find threads that discuss how to work around that.

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External hard drive not showing up in finder

Hi,
I have a LaCie Rikiki USB 3.0 1TB external hard drive for more than a year or so (probably longer than that). The hard drive has 2 partitions with one formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) <named MAC> and the other MS-DOS (FAT) for windows <named as FOR WIN>.
The MAC volume has been working fine yesterday then suddenly it just started to transfer files very slowly and had problems unmounting when I am done transferring files saying it is in used by an application when it is not. So I had to force eject the the MAC volume while the FOR WIN volume ejected fine. However, here comes the problem.
Once I reconnected the external hard drive, it does show up in disk utility but not in finder. Also, the FOR WIN volume showed up as disk1s2 in disk utility. I tried using disk utility's verify and repair disk and couldn't fix the FOR WIN volume so I gave up on that since I don't have any important files in that volume. On the other hand, I could run verify and repair to get the MAC volume mounted. Through that I could get some files copied but soon finder hangs on me and wouldn't open even after relaunch which led me to disconnect the drive by just unplugging the USB. Now when I connect the drive, it again shows up in disk utility but not mounted and when I try to use the verify and repair all I get is:
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checking file system
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
Verify and Repair volume "MAC"
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Volume repair complete
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required
and it's stuck at "updating boot support........" I've let it ran for like 6 hours and it's still at that stage. Had enough, closed disk utility and reconnected the harddrive and it's still the same showing up in disk utility but not mounting.
Could anyone please help? Thank you!

tonydenson wrote:
That's great thanks. cmd-shift-c brings it back.
then it should also show up on the desktop. go to finder preferences->general and check the boxes to show external and CD drives.
Incidentally, I now have the opposite problem, I can't eject it. I get the message that the disk is in use, try quitting applications. I quite often get this with mounted drives or flash drives. Is there any way of finding out which particular application has a given device open ?
sometimes spotlight keeps drives busy.
you can see what's doing it by running the following terminal command
sudo lsof /volumes/lacie

WD 1TB ExternaL Hard Disk not seen on desktop/finder

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Unfortuanately WD external HD's have a pretty bad reputation with Macs. It has something to do with their enclosures as their internal HD's seem to work just fine. I would recommend exchanging that drive for one with a higher quality enclose. Just about any other manufacturer would be fine however the 3 best IMHO are:
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External hard rive not showing up in Finder

I have done back-ups with this external drive (OWC Mercury Elite Pro) before without issue. Then a few weeks ago it doen't appear in Finder. I have done permission repairs and verification on the iMac. It says all is fine. I have disconnected and reconnected the hard drive. Rebooted. I went into Time Machine to see if there was any options there but it is not showing anything. It's connected via a firewire (FW400). What do I do?

Is the OWC turned on? Is the power connected? Are the wires secure?
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i used to use an older macbook, where my extern (it is a WD) would always show up.
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Hello,
My external drive does not show up in finder. But it appaers in DISK UTILITY. When I tried to repair it, it said:
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** /dev/disk1s1 (NO WRITE)
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Unable to read directory (Input/output error)
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A

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You need to get some software that allows your Mac to read and write to the NTFS disk. There's a whole bunch of stuff out there, but this program has a good review, and you can try it for free. I would move everything off of your external drive, reformat it into Mac OSX extended, and use it for your Mac. You don't need NTFS anymore, unless you still have a Windows computer that needs it.

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Only my computer hard drive is and I want to import from an external drive. I have always been able to until I updated to Aperture 3.6 and Yosemite.

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I had the same problem. On the folders on the drive with the Aperture library did show in the Import panel. After I clicked the computer icon in the upper left corner of the Import panel, suddenly all drives appeared.
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to frederic1943
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Hi,
After Mountain Update, the external hard drive icon wont show up in Finder sidebar, Desktop and in Disk Utility.
Is there anything which needs to be set in System Preference ??
I have the External Hard Disk checkbox checked in Finder Preference, inspite of this I cannot see the Hard drive icon
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You can try looking in Finder Prefereneces.
Go to the Finder Menu > Prefeences
Look at the sidebar pane. Make sure the Devices box is checked.
Go back to your finder window and make sure that Devices are not hidden. To the right of the Devices work there is a dimly visible show/hide command that is visible only when you have your cursor next to the Devices word.
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Maybe true, and the drive would probably work fine with Leopard. One thing that's obvious is that Apple did make changes in the way that FireWire works in Snow Leopard. Many drives and drive manufacturers work well with SL, but there have also been reports of firmware issues by Western Digital and other companies.
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Hi,
I have an external hard disk WD Passport 500Go. It does not appear on my iMac Retina but it appears correctly on my macBook Pro.
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My external hard drive not showing up

Hello,
My external hard drive is not showing up on my desktop. I went to finder & preferences>general and made sure I checked "show these items" and checked hard drives. I even unchecked it because I have 2 other external hard drives. When I checked the hard drive box the other 2 hard drives appeared but the third hard drive did not. The hard drive not showing up on my desk top does show up when I double click my system hard drive & can be opened from there, but I want to see it on my desk top. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

This procedure is a diagnostic test. It makes no changes to your data.
Please triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
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Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
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External Hard Disk not showing up on Finder

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