External Hard Disks Not Mounting

I am having trouble with external hard disks appearing on my desktop.
Sometimes they appear, sometimes they don't. I have run Disk Utility when they do appear. No problems were found.
It seems to have started after I updated to iTunes 10.
Has anyone any suggestions?

No answer to your problem, I'm afraid, but I have been having similar problems but with CDs rather than external hard disks since I installed iTunes10-they appear greyed out in Finder.

Similar Messages

Menu bar items disappear, and external hard disks not mounting

Hi,
This problem started yesterday. I start up my Mac, and none of the menu bar items in the top-right of the screen show up. Then I noticed that none of my external hard disks had mounted.
Looking at the Activity Monitor, I saw that sustemuiserver was not running.
Reading around, I discovered that this usually follows a FrontRow hack (which I haven't installed). I tried deleting the ~/Library/preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist file and logging out and back in again. Everything seems to work again, for a while. However, the same thing happened this morning.
Has anyone else experienced this, and anyone know a fix to stop it from happening?
Thanks!
Tom

I've been having the same problem for a while (I believe since 10.5.3). I have reinstalled OSX, installed OSX 10.5.6 combo hoping that it would fix it, but nothing yet. I have the problem only when I insert an expresscard into the slot and restart. It connects to a PCI expansion chassis. When I restart with the ExpressCard installed, all menu items dissappear and I can't eject volumes (hard drives) from the desktop. If I restart without the ExpressCard in, the menu bars seem to work properly. I tried with an older G4 running 10.4.11, with a CardBus card and the same chassis, and that worked fine... all menu bar items displayed and worked properly and I could eject disks.
I have also tried creating new users, but that didn't work either.

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.

My external hard disk not working properly in my macbook pro . anyone help me . its seagate hard disk

My external hard disk not working properly in my macbook pro . anyone help me . its seagate hard disk

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.

External hard disk not recognized by time machine

I have an external backup disk, Passport, that is no longer recognized by time machine or my computer. I used it a couple of weeks ago to restore my wife's MacBook. Hers is an older model and uses Lion. Since then my MacBook Pro--mavericks will not mount the external hard disk.
OKAY==after leaving the Passport on for a couple of hours it now is mounted. Don't know what happened, but it is now working.
CANCEL problems

I see it's now working but make sure you are running the latest version of WD software.
http://community.wd.com/t5/News-Announcements/New-Release-WD-SmartWare-Version-1 -3-6-for-Mac-10-5-10-9-11-25/td-p/628441

External hard-disk not working with firewire under Snow Leopard

Hi. I have a LaCie d2 external hard-disk that has Firewire 800, 400 and usb2. I previously used it on my old (angle-poise) iMac connecting using the Firewire 400 socket. I've just a got a new mac with Snow Leopard and I thought it would we best to connect to the LaCie with Firewire 800. However when I do this, the disc mounts ok, but browsing in the Finder is really slow and copying files from the disk to the imac seems to work at a really slow rate (less than USB1 speed) if at all ! However, I switched to using the USB2 connection instead and it works like a dream. What gives ? Is Firewire in Snow Leopard buggy ??

There's no problem with the drive.
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.
Have you checked with your vendor to see if they are offering a firmware update for your drive?
BTW, I got a new FW case a few months ago while at a Fry's electronic store. The brand new USB2 and FW400 cables worked fine. The FW800 cable did not, but another cable came to the rescue. Just saying...

2 different brand USB external hard drives not mounting- Firewire ok

Hi, first timer here so apologies in advance.
i have to different brand external hard disks and they both show up fine with a firewire connection. the trouble is that i need to use the usb connection and neither show up. (shows up in system profiler though but not disk utility.) why USB if i can use Firewire? I will be using the disk to connect to a Wii console via usb port and the Wii is not recognizing either disk either?
Any ideas on how to get one of these disks to mount by USB?
cables are fine as work with USB only hard disks.
Thanks in advance

Hello Bob,
Thanks for your reply.
Unfortunately it does not show up at all in "disk utility". But appears in System Profiler under USB. This is true of 2 different external hard drives that mount fine with the firewire cables. One is a 3.5 inch and the other is a 2.5 inch portable. The USB cable is not faulty as tested it with another USB peripheral. Now a big believer in coincidences. Am i doing something wrong?
any other thoughts?
thanks again

External hard disk not detecting

Hi, I am using WD 1 TB external hard disk and it was going all good till now one day my friend asked for my hard disk as he need to back up some data and connected it to PC. Now I am trying to connect it to mac but mac is not detecting.
My hard disk has all my softwares and other important data.
Need help ASAP

repair disk just checks for errors
likely its a PC formatted HD, thats why you cant read it
Formatting ERASES a HD, so dont do that to the other persons HD.
check what the format of it is. If its NTFS youd need an APP like Paragon to read / write to it.

External Hard disk not being detected.

External Hard disk is corrupt. It was plugged into an Xbox and fidgetted around. I think the kid playing with it clicked on format but before it could do anything i unplugged it. But in the process this drive is not getting detected any more and all the data on the drive is non accessable. Is there anything that can be done to recover the data?

but no partition
Yes, you interrupted a formatting.
Since the "other person" commanded a format (why?), which is very quick operation, youve got a nasty mess as per the HD.
This is why having a minimum secondary redundancy of all data on an external HD is necessity.
Remaining option is pricey data recovery specialists.

External hard drive not mounting

external hard drive not mounting

I fixed mine by uninstalling the software that came with the harddrive such as Tuxera and reinstalled it now myharddrive works again and i did not have to delete the harddrive and reformat it.
I tried a lot like reseting the Pram And connecting other harddrives but by unstalling the original software it works all over again. I hope this works for you because i was getting pretty frustrated myself.
Im running a 2012 macbook pro with 10.9.3
boom mind blown

External hard drive not mounting on emac, works fine on windows xp machine

I am running an emac 1ghz powerpc G4 with 768MB sdram and version 10.4.9
I have an external hard drive that up to a few days ago ran smoothly. It contains all my itunes, iphoto, and imovie libraries.
Now it will not mount. It lights up, it runs, etc but I can't use it. I tried restarting machine etc. No avail.
it is a usb drive. Today I took it downstairs and plugged it into my daughter's windows xp machine. It recognized it right away (I was shocked too) and everything is there good as before.
I plugged it into every usb port in the emac and nothing. I am using the same cord on the xp and it works fine.
Any idea what it could be and how to fix it. I read on hear a lot to use disk utility. However when I run it it just freezes. When I turn that external drive off disk utility runs fine.

I am running an emac 1ghz powerpc G4 with 768MB sdram
and version 10.4.9
I have an external hard drive that up to a few days
ago ran smoothly. It contains all my itunes, iphoto,
and imovie libraries.
Now it will not mount. It lights up, it runs, etc
but I can't use it. I tried restarting machine etc.
No avail.
it is a usb drive. Today I took it downstairs and
plugged it into my daughter's windows xp machine. It
recognized it right away (I was shocked too) and
everything is there good as before.
I plugged it into every usb port in the emac and
nothing. I am using the same cord on the xp and it
works fine.
Any idea what it could be and how to fix it. I read
on hear a lot to use disk utility. However when I
run it it just freezes. When I turn that external
drive off disk utility runs fine.
Your external drive is formatted FAT32 or FAT, or the Windows box would have a problem seeing it. (Unless you have MacDrive on that box, that is.)
If it is formatted FAT32 or FAT, you are NOT going to be able to use Disk Utility (or any other Mac utility) on that drive. Disk Utility doesn't do FAT.
I'd copy the contents of the drive elsewhere then start up Disk Utility first and then plug the drive into the Mac and format it FAT32 from Disk Utility. If that doesn't work, format it FAT32 on the Windows machine. Note: if this drive is larger than 32 GB, you're going to need to generate two or more partitions, as while WinXP can read FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB, it can't create them. Macs and Linux boxes can create large FAT32 partitions. Second note: if the drive is smaller than 4 GB, you might want to think about formatting it FAT instead of FAT32. Indeed, Windows may insist. Do not let Windows format it NTFS; Macs can read NTFS volumes, but can't write to them.

WD Elements External Hard Drive not mounting

My external hard drive is not mounting it is connected by via USB connected directly to my Macbook. When I connect it error "The disk you inserted is not redable by this computer". I can see it on Disk Utility however all options are grayed out. I also tried connecting it to my sister's windows machine same thing not mounting. I've tried this suggestion http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2176 but I got an error "Error: -69877: Couldn't open device".
By the way it's a self powered 2.2TB WD Elements
Badly needed help!

I had the same info (with a WD essentials encolusre where I just replaced a 750 with a 2TB), but after closing both DiskDrill and Disk utility, the terminal worked. So have a look if there are any other disk monitorings on.
good luck

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

I have been using WD 1TB external USB hard disk for 4 months with my Macbook with Tiger 10.4 on it. I have plugged in the disk after I purchased without any special formatting or anything, and it worked fine so far. It just took a while, about few minutes, for the Macbook to show it on the desktop every time I got it disconnected and connected again. However, this time, I can not see the disk on the desktop nor on the Finder no matter what. I have plugged it in and out several times, I have restarted the machine etc. Nothing works. The disk is quite empty and it works fine with the PC..no cable problem or and disk failure issue for sure. I can see the disk on the Disk Utility app, but I can neither verify nor mount it...Any suggestions would be very helpful..thanks in advance

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:
OWC Mercury Elite Pro series
Lacie Quadra d2 series
G-Tech G-Drive series
All have similar features and build quality. I would be comfortable using any of the three but I've been successfully been using the Lacie's for 3+ years.
Roger

Lacie firewire 800 external hard drive not mounting in mac os 10.4.8

I have a pm g5 Dual 2ghz system ,i have connected an firewire 800 lacie 1tb external hard drive to the system,now the problem is it is not mounting on the desktop shows in the diskutility repaired the disk say's disk volume ok any way to mount the external hd on the desktop

Hi Veena, Welcome to Apple Discussions.
And you've tried choosing the volume and pressing the "Mount " icon on the tool bar of Disk Utility?
Have you shut down your Mac and disconnected your firewire cable 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, this helps to reset the FireWire port(s).
Do you have TTP or DW, both of which you could use to try to mount it.
It is also possible that you have a bad cable or a bad port, do other FW devices work?
-mj
[email protected]

ITunes Resets to local Drive Space when External Hard Drive not mounted

I have a large shared network drive where my son, my wintel box and I all have media placed on. All our computers are networked and authorized for each others music.
The problem is iTunes will default the 'iTunes Music folder location' to a local drive space if the external drive / path is not immediate available when iTunes is started (user:Music:iTunes Music vrs Eternal HD:Music:iTunes Music). This will sometimes will happen on boot, I have login mounting the external drive but that authorization / process once in a while times takes longer than starting up iTunes mostly due to an iPod connected to that computer. Since iTunes is not seeing that external drive (it isn't available yet). So the effect is iTunes defaults 'iTunes Music folder location' to the local music location - but - maintains the full library list (ie 10,000 question marks).
I have each computer maintaining it's own libraries on their respective drives which index to the music folders / files on the external (this is an itunes default to maintain the local library one each computer).
So ... How can I force iTunes to maintain the 'iTunes Music folder location' ?
(can the default location be changed ?... plist or some other file, or is this hard coded - or write a script to hold up iTunes to launch until after the external Hd is mounted)

I am sure that some will cringe at this
Note (my opinion) : I found when sharing with a Wintel box and Apple boxes it is better to use just smb. Mixing the smb AND afp arises to hang up problems and the afp is the side that seems to hang up the most. (that hurt me to type, I blame Finder - another story)
So - the script I use is fairly straight forward - Open Script Editor:
tell application "Finder"
mount volume "smb://[ip address of hard drive]/[drive directory you wish to mount]" as user name "[username]" with password "[password of said user]"
end tell
I recommend compiling the script (don't forget to save a copy you can also edit too - save as script). To compile a script : Save as Application, Run Only, No Start Up Screen. Since this has hard code Username / Passwords in the code - make sure you are happy with who will be running this script. So with the goal is to auto run when you start up, I tend to feel let it go ahead. If you wish to use afp (ie you are only sharing between macs - change the smb to afp in that code).
Next is to add this to your start up. Sys Pref > Accounts > Login Items
Just add the compiled application script to your user(s) login item.
Now for the - well, ugly part. Remove the iTunesHelper from the list.
Using Finder, Find iTunes - Show Package Contents, find iTunesHelper (it is iTunes:Contents:Resources)
Drag iTunesHelper into the Login Items (it should be listed now at the end of the list). Why this help I really can not tell you - I only have an idea of why - I have noticed that when my iPod may be plugged in when I reboot that iTunesHelper starts later in the sequence.
I did play around with changing the start up info on the unix side, for the brave only I would suggest. But - you can hard code a little better auto mounting a volume / hard disk / folder there on boot up. I did with to stay in the Mac GUI and AppleScript was just plain simple. The script can be modified to test if the volume is mounted etc time out try again etc etc etc... I kept it simple and straight forward.

External Hard Disks Not Mounting

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for