External hard-drive disappeared after dragging into Spotlight

Dear users,
My external hard-drive under devices disappeared after I dragged it into Spotlight to reindex it to make it searchable.
There was a cloud puff animation when i dragged it from the devices icon on the left of folders to the spotlight privacy box window.
Please help. Thank you!

Hi there,
did you find out what the problem was or how to re-map the ext. HDD?
I have the same problem.
thank you.

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USB keys and external hard drives disappear after 30 seconds to 1 minute of being mounted.

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On my windows partition in bootcamp, all usb keys work perfectly fine.
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Hi wdmpfm,
Here is something from an earlier post on the -36 error that may help to identify the issue:
A -36 is a disc I/O error. You might have a corrupt file, or a corrupted drive. Try creating a new file and see if you still get the error. If you do, it might be wise to run a Disc Repair program to see if it can find any errors that it can fix.
And one from another thread:
You need to format your drive correctly. New drives come formatted for Windows, & then they seem to work — but not properly.
+Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility+
Choose one of the +Mac OS Extended+ formats.
Obviously first you will have to back-up all the data you have already put on the drive, because it will all be lost when you re-format.
Hope one of these may help!
Cheers,
GB

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I had backed up my I-tunes files to an external hard drive but after my computer crashed and I restored it when I try to reload from the hard drive the message comes up ""I-tunes files cannot be read because it was created by a newer version of I-tunes". Help Please

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Internal & external hard drives disappeared in Finder

It happened yesterday on my G5 running 10.4.6. I have 2 hard drives inside my G5 and one external hard drive connected with firewire 800. The second hard drive and the external hard drive disappeared in Finder. But the one that has the system on it is fine. They did show up in Disk Utility. But it said they are both "not mounted".
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Invalid B-tree node size
Volume check failed.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
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1 volume could not be repaired because of an error"
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Sounds like you have a major problem that Disk Utility cannot fix. This has happened before to other users. I suggest you get a copy of DiskWarrior and that will probably fix it. You can read about/buy it here:
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Mulder

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Did you format the external disk on Windows? If you did this, probably the external disk is formatted in NTFS. OS X can't write on this format, so it's normal that it doesn't allow you to copy the files.
In this case, you have three possibilities:
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2. Copy the hard drive content to your internal disk and format the external disk with Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Do it only if you are going to use the external disk only with OS X.
3. The same as the last one but formatting it with exFAT. This filesystem is compatible with Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8) and OS X (10.6.5 and newer), so you can write and read files on external disks formatted with it on Windows and OS X, but you may have problems on Linux

External Hard Drive Fail After Waking from Sleep

Hi,
I've been having this issue for over a year (since upgrading to Lion, and now still persists after upgrading to Mountain Lion), and I haven't been able to find the exact answer I need after searching through the posts here, and on the internet.
I have a 2011 MBP, and after upgrading to Lion last year, I've noticed that my WD external hard drive for the Mac has issues to be recognized after the laptop wakes from sleep. The drive icons are still there on the desktop, and all the files are listed. However, I cannot open any of the files, and Time Machine backup automatically fails.I am able to eject the drives by dragging the icons into the trash can. However, nothing happens if I simply unplug the fire wire 800 cable and re-plug it into the computer after ejecting the drives. I need to reset the external drive by unplugging both the fire wire cable and the power supply, and replug everything.
Aside from being a hampering process after waking from sleep, this is also very stressful on the drive itself, so I would like to fix this. Does anyone know the issue behind this or have a solution? Thanks in advance!

Thanks for this, and apologies for delay in replying...in between seeing your post I backed up the ext hdd to another mac and used the disc utility to erase and repair and then re mounted the ext hdd. OK. I have then tested the ext hdd being recognised when waking from sleep mode a few times and everything appears to be fine. If this doesn't work (long term) I will follow the instructions as you have suggested....
I now have a new problem with my HP printer (Photosmart Plus) which is not being recognised by a new wireless router..Ok whilst the router is switch on and I have reconfigured the printer..but when the router is switched off overnight and then switched back on...I get a 'printer is not connected' message and have to go through the re configure routine all over. I am minded to think this is a router problem as the same issue is happening to my wifes Mac Book Pro (which is only a few weeks old)...any suggestions..

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Hello Janeburows,
You might have setup your iTunes in such a way that you store your Media files on your External Hard Drive and if that is the situation then whenever you delete anything permanently from your iTunes on your Computer when the External Drive is connected then the Content will get deleted from your External Hard Drive. To verify the Location for the Media files which you have on iTunes do the following.
Open iTunes > Preferences> Advanced and you will see it under iTunes Media Folder Location
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391

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It might have created a new user and loaded under that.. new user being the old user. But if you have issues do it again, only this time pick where the backup will go.
http://pondini.org/TM/16.html
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How can I move my iTunes movies from my computer to an external hard drive? After I copy them to the drive, do I just delete them from my computer? How will I be able to watch them again?

Hi,
I have a MacBook Air (July 2013) with the latest Mavericks OS X. I also have the lastest version of iTunes.
My computer has very little memory left, so I wanted to free some up. When I looked, movies were taking up a considerable amount of space. I want to move them from my computer, but still be able to watch them if I want to later. I haven't purchased an external drive yet, because I didn't know what size to get. I also have a lot of Photoshop files that are taking up a lot of memory, so I might put some of those on too. Would you recommend a 1 TB one or bigger?
Can you take me through the exact process of moving my iTunes movies to the external drive? I understand where to find the files (My Name<Music<iTunes Media<Movies), but am stuck from there. Do I simply drag them to the external drive and then delete them? Will this delete them from my iTunes library? How will I go about watching them again? I assumed that I would just plug the external hard drive in, click in the movie and watch. Is it this simple? I only want to move my movies, otherwise I would follow tutorials for backing up the library. Once you back up the movies, can you delete them from your computer?
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Molly

iTunes does not have provision for automatically storing one kind of media on a separate drive, so you have some basic decisions to make first. Do you want these movies to still appear in your iTunes library, or are you content with browsing filenames on a drive in Finder when you want to look for one? The second's the easiest thing because then you don't have to have an external drive permanently turned on and attached to your computer (wired or wireless). To do that you literelly only need to drag your movies folder to an archive drive and delete movies from iTunes. To watch them again you can add it back to iTunes while holding down the option key so the movie is used from its location on the external drive.
There's ways to move the movies to an external drive while keeping them in iTunes but the external drive iwll always have to be turned on and connected to the computer or you will see a bunch of broken link exclamation marks.
Realize what you are talking about is not "backup". Backup (which you should do) is putting a second or more copy of items on external drives for the day when your internal drive fails and everything on it is lost, inclduing all your home photos and perhaps things that have been pulled from the iTunes Store and can no longer be re-downloaded.

Backed library onto external hard drive, but after transfer, playlists, playcounts ect haven't saved?

On my old laptop I backed up my music on to an external hard drive ready to transfer over to my new laptop.
After copying the folder from my external to the new laptops' own drive, I duly followed instructions to restore the library.
I thought all was well and good but I noticed that it only copied the songs.. no song history or playlists. I added a new album to the library (an annoying experience after the new update in Feb) and noticed that when I went to sync my ipod (classic), all it did was charge my ipod.
So basically all my itunes is, is just a brand new library with my songs pasted in. Theres no history of song playcounts or playlists.
Needless to say im very irritated, as I have had no problems in the past and seem to have lost over EIGHT YEARS of history :/
The old laptop has been reformatted and wiped so I can't even go back and start again. Is there any way of moving my info from the ipod itself to the laptop?!! Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

Ah sorted it. Basically I had renamed my iTunes folder in the hard drive, so when I transfered to My music there were two folders. I have since renamed and deleted the original iTunes folder and it works now. Thank you

External hard drive corrupted after trying to fix it, in macbook Disk utilities

hello,
After fixing my macbook internal drive with disk utilities, i put to verify my WD external hard drive,that acuse me some errors.
Well i don´t no why but i put the disk utility run for de WD external drive. A few time later , shows up a message that the disk couln't fixed, to format them.
After that my external WD wasn't recognize by any computer, i think the modules of the disk was corruped.
Does any one knows how can i invert ou fix the problem, without formating?
Thank you

Balibaleia wrote:
Does any one knows how can i invert ou fix the problem, without formating?
I assume your asking because you have data on that drive to recover first.
Your going to need to install something like Data Rescue on your computer's boot drive, then connect the problem drive and another external drive with enough space to send all the recovered files too.
Data Rescue takes a long time, it reads the 1's and 0's of the files themselves off the drive, not listening to anything else, it will cost you $100, but that's the going price for software like this.
The option if that doesn't work is to take the internal hard drive out of the external case and use a SATA to USB adapter cable $40, then try the above Data Rescue method again.
If you don't care about any data on the drive, then just toss it. Drives are cheap.

External hard drives ejecting after iMac wakes from sleep.

External hard drive keeps ejecting after iMac wakes from sleep. TM does not recognise, so have to unplug then re plug in Ext HD, only then TM will perform a back up. Not seamless backups. Help to resolve would be grand

Ive got the same problem with a Western Digital 500GB My Book Pro on my iMac Ive tried it on a few other machines and I think its happened on them, I say think because it was only when it had happened a couple of time that I started to take notice of circumstances etc and ive only had the drive a week, downloaded what may be a more uptodate "My Button manager" from the WD site still happened but Ive got this idea that it didnt happen on one machine which may not have had the MyButton thing on at that time, have you solved it yet I am using USB at the moment.
20" iMac 2.13Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

External Hard Drive unable to search with Spotlight

I have an external hard drive that is connected to a mac running 10.5.8, and is availble as a shared drive to all in the dept.
Until recently, we could perform Spotlight searches to find specific files, but that ability has ceased to work.
I have tried re-indexing (using the spotlight privacy dodge). I have rebooted the sytem, repaired permissions on the host computer, checked the hard drive with disk utility. All to no avail.
Please can someone suggest a possible solution to this problem.
The macs accessing the drive conatin a variety OS from 10.5 to 10.7, and none seem able to search for the files.
thanks

i tried this:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3865/session/L3RpbWUvMTMxMjQwOTU zMS9zaWQva25STDhFQWs%3D
then the message still popped up. So I did the following:
1. making sure the name i give my hard drive doesn't have space in it (it probably didn't matter but i was ready to do anything to make it work!)
2. empty my trash (the one on the computer, that is...)
3. make sure that any previous files from the drive isn't open
then it worked! i hope it works for you too.

External Hard Drives Disappear

I have 2-1TB WD External Hard Drives connected via Firewire 800 to my iMac. They periodically disappear and the only way to make them reappear is to unplug them and plug them back in. I have unchecked the "Put Hard Drives to Sleep" option in the Power Management section of the System Preferences but that does not stop the drives from disappearing. Once they disappear the drives no longer show up in the Disk Utility either.
This has been an ongoing problem with iMac's since at least September of 2009. This is frustrating because one of the Hard Drives is my TimeMachine. Therefore, the Backups with TimeMachine are no longer Automatic because I have to periodically unplug the firewire and power from the drive and then plug it back in.
Please resolve this issue.

Sounds like "the invisibility plague" see Francine's useful tips here.
http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/invisible.html
Also, not to be the bearer of bad news, but WD drives do not play well with Mac.
-mj

External hard-drive disappeared after dragging into Spotlight

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