External hard drive folders disappear

My external 2 Terabyte Seagate hard drive keeps loosing folders. This has happened twice now. Everything is fine on Friday, I shut down for the weekend, then I return on Monday and some of the folders are missing. Today it happened later in the day, apparently after a Time Machine Backup, rather than first thing in the AM after booting. I am backing up to a different 3T Seagate external hard drive, both are Firewire 800. When I run Disk Utility it tells me everything is fine. Naturally, it fails to mention there are ten years of archives missing!
The first time this happened I got lucky and noticed some folders were missing. I searched the Web but did not find anything useful or relevant. My firmware on the hard drives is up to date. So, I totally erased the external, repartitioned using GUID, and did a restore from Time Machine. Everything seemed to work for week or so. Then today once again, one partition out of three is missing folders, the same partition as last time. It was fine at 4:43, based on Time Machine time line, but at 5:30 I am missing the bulk of the info on that partition.
I am running 10.9.5 on a Mac Mini. Does anyone know what is going on?
Thank you.

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My external hard drive has disappeared

My external hard drive has disappeared from the 'open file' window in photoshop CS6. It's working fine and appears in other applications such as bridge and lightroom. How do I get it back? I'm running a Mac on OS X.

You may have accidentally dragged the drive out of the Devices list in the sidebar.
In a Finder window with visible sidebar, do Shift+Cmd+G to get the Go To Folder dialog. Enter
/volumes
then click OK.
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External Hard drive has disappeared from fcpx

Hey guys,
I know this question comes up a lot so I'm suprised to say I've failed to find any fixes on other threads. Many people having the same issue say that the drive shows up temporarily in the events and project source windows but then disapear, this is not the case for me it just doesn't show up at all. I've put 90% of my fcp projects and events onto one external hard drive which is working fine with everything but fcp, it even recognises it if i want to import from the drive. It has been working fine up until now which is weird as I've not changed anything on it recently, the only thing I've changed is I used a client's drive to do the latest edit, which worked fine!
Someone must have found a solution to this problem by now, it's causing me a lot of trouble as I've got deadlines to meet and I'm being put out by what seems to be a ridiculous little bug, surely apple would have got onto a fix for this by now?? In the mean time all and any suggestions welcome!

llyrhughes wrote:
Hey guys,
I know this question comes up a lot so I'm suprised to say I've failed to find any fixes on other threads. Many people having the same issue say that the drive shows up temporarily in the events and project source windows but then disapear, this is not the case for me it just doesn't show up at all. I've put 90% of my fcp projects and events onto one external hard drive which is working fine with everything but fcp, it even recognises it if i want to import from the drive. It has been working fine up until now which is weird as I've not changed anything on it recently, the only thing I've changed is I used a client's drive to do the latest edit, which worked fine!
Someone must have found a solution to this problem by now, it's causing me a lot of trouble as I've got deadlines to meet and I'm being put out by what seems to be a ridiculous little bug, surely apple would have got onto a fix for this by now?? In the mean time all and any suggestions welcome!
Have you used it successfully with FCP X before? What content has changed in the drive?
I am assuming you checked all the usual things, but still it is worth taking a look again:
1) Is it formatted as Mac OS extended?
2) Did you add any folder titled something that may be thought of as a camera (folders like "AVCHD", "Private", "DCIM", "Video", ....)
3) Are the folders called exactly "Final Cut Events" and "Final Cut Projects" and located at the ROOT of the drive?
It seems like you know all this, but still there may have been something you missed.

External hard drive mysteriously disappeared.

My external hard drive (Firewire) mysteriously disappeared. I can get it to pop up in Disk Utility, but I can't get it to show on the desktop. I've tried it on a few Mac computers. Do you have any idea what happened?

That's very strange. I don't think I've heard of DU exhibiting that behavior before.
I presume the reason you don't want to erase the drive is that there is un-backed-up data on it, and that if you could recover that data you could either reformat (erase) or dispose of the drive.
You may want to try downloading and using the free demo version of one or more of these data recovery utilities:
Data Rescue II
FileSalvage
VirtualLab
In each case, the demo will show you what files the full version would be able to recover from the drive. You can then decide whether the files you could recover are valuable enough to justify buying the full version of the utility.

External Hard Drive folders won't refresh or retain changes...

I customize folders in my external hard drives but now the external hard drive window that pops up when I plug it in, doesn't refresh at all and nor does the hard drive retain any changes made, usually you can see the icons flicker when you refresh a folder
but this doesn't happen at all, it's like it's stuck, it's still operational for the most part but I can't customize folder icons when it's like this.
What could possibly be causing this?

Hi,
"I have tried plugging the hard drive into different computers but the same problem occurs so then I thought it was the hard drive itself but the same problem occurs on all 12 of my hard drives"
Were these 12 drives external drive or internal drive?
Please create a new folder that don't customize the icon or anything for test.
If it work fine, we could suspect the culprit is the customization.
Meanwhile, we recommend you use Clean Boot to troubleshoot if there exists software conflict:
How to perform a clean boot in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135
Karen Hu
TechNet Community Support

External Hard Drive Suddenly Disappeared From List

Hi guys. About a week ago, a weird msg started popping up about my external (F:) hard drive, after which nothing inside of it would show up anymore.
If I clicked on a folder, there'd be nothing in it. Then if I unplugged, and re-plugged, it would all be back like nothing happened.
Yesterday, the D: drive disappeared from the population list in My Computer altogether, and no matter what I do it doesn't return. I've only tried plugging into different ports and restarting, but that's all I know how to do. I was going to system restore and
see if that helped, but this message came up on the screen:
"Changes made to drive(s) D: after this point cannot be reversed because the drive was either excluded from system restore monitoring, or was turned off or removed"
I have no idea what to do. Literally everything is on that drive. Any suggestions? And thanks in advance for any help, it'd be appreciated.

Just tried it on another computer and the drive didn't show up there either.
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Volume on External Hard Drive Suddenly Disappeared

Hello
I'm having problems with an external hard disk which i partitioned into two volumes several months ago. Since this afternoon one of the volumes will NOT mount on the desktop of OSX 3.9 The other volume on the same external drive DOES mount.
I restarted my mac using OS9 and the mystery volume reappears on the desktop, (which is reassuring because i can see that all my files are all still there). But some of these files are only useful to me with OSX applications.
How can i get this volume to mount?
I've already tried in Disk Utilities. It's name appears, but in that faded colour which means that my mac knows its there, but refuses to mount it - even when i ask nicely in Disk Utilities. I even asked Disk Utilities to run a check of the disk and do any necessary repair work.... which it did and now tells me that the volume "seems ok"! But unmountable :((
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Would be grateful for THE solution :)) ...urgently!
dswimmer

Hello! I've seen problems like this before and sometimes Diskwarrior can repair the directory for that volume when diskutility can't. Have you tried booting from the install cd to see if disk utility can see and repair it there? Tom

External Hard Drive Icon Disappeared/No access

Hi-
I have a Fantom Firewire External HD. I've owned it for almost 3 years. The other day I started my computer and the icon had disappeared and I can no longer access it in OS X. The drive still shows in Disc Utility, but I can't mount it/disc repair/anything. If I reboot to OS9 it boots on there. I've tried Norton Disc Doctor, but it says the computer does not recognize the drive and do I want to initialize, which I don't! Any suggestions on getting it back to OS X?
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Hi Mark, just curious about Norton Disk Doctor and found this about it ..
"Symantec has posted a note saying that the only Norton product compatible with Mac OS 10.4.X (Tiger) is Norton Antivirus 10.0 for the Macintosh. Do not use other Norton products because the results will be at best partially successful and may in fact cause damage to your computer."
I haven't used anything by Norton, so I don't know what damage that would be, however, try removing the program and then Disk Repair afterwards.
Further to the hard disk not being mounted, are you able to try another Mac OS X computer to see if it mounts on that? If so, try re-setting PRAM - (pressing Command-Option-P-R together on starting up and listen for two start-up bongs, then release).
This will, amongst other things, will re-set all connection buses for firewire and USB ports.
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Robert.
Message was edited by: Bob'syourUncle

External Hard Drive has "Disappeared"

I have a Maxtor One Touch II External drive conected through a Firewire 800 cable which I use for Time Machine. The drive got switched off a couple of weeks ago, but when I switched it back on it would not mount. The drive sounds like it is running normally.
Having searched the boards, I've tried the following:
OS X Software update (I'm on 10.6.8)
SMC reset
PRAM reset
Disk permissions repair
Disk repair (from install disk)
Creating a new user account
Connecting the drive via USB
Onyx and Cocktail scripts
When I run Profiler the drive shows up under Firewire Bus as "unknown device", the details are:
GUID 0x0
Maximum speed: up to 400 Mb/sec
Connection speed: unknown
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Thanks, Noel

Thought you could use this info about getting FireWire to work! (I'm assuming the One Touch is FireWire; some of this works for USB too)
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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 did'nt 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. Yours is the 10.3.9 Combo update. Others reading, download the Combo that applies to your system.
If that still did'nt 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 battery can cause FireWire to not be recognized, so make sure it's good!
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Cheers!
DALE

Why do my external hard drives keep disappearing?

Hi, we have 3 external harddrives plugged into the the USB ports on the computer (not keyboard) they frequently dissappear and have to be unplugged and plugged back in to get them back. This has been happening when we only had one external and then with 2 externals or now with 3. Its not a huge deal but it does become frustrating on busy work days. Is there a fix for this?
2.66GHZ Intel Core i5 with 4 GB 1067 MHZ DDR3

Hi
try use a powered usb hub , may help a lot
HTH

External hard drives disappeared

Hi
My external hard drives have disappeared, I cannot find them anywhere when I boot every thing up. How do I get it up and working again?

Are the drives connected via USB or Firewire?
Look at these links.
What to do if your computer won't recognize a FireWire device
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88338
Dealing with FireWire problems (drives not mounting, devices unrecognized, etc.)
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20041221081432908
Common fixes for USB device issues (unrecognized, etc.)
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20070824012114701
 Cheers, Tom

External hard drive not visible in Finder or Disk Utility

Hi everyone,
My Wester Digital 2TB external hard drive has disappeared, so to speak, with all my photos. I work as a freelance photographer. Mostly on Lightroom 5.6
When I plug it in, with firewire, I can feel the disk rotating normally however it does not appear in finder or disk utility.
I've tried using a USB cable, restarting my mac, forced restart, changing firewire ports (HD has 2 ports), plugging the HD into a different laptop and nothing.
Ive also searched Finder prefrences and visibility is enabled.
I have no idea what could have caused this as I was using the HD the night before. I didnt pullout without properly ejecting. Maybe the HD is full or almost, but I dont think that would the cause of these troubles.
I'm using a late 2011 Macbook Pro OS X 10.9.4
Any suggestions??
Thanx

An update for anyone who can help me:
I have tried the external hard drive in other computers (mac and windows), each time I get the same problem above.
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Bruce

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.

Files Disappeared on Wall Street , Need Advice, And on External Hard Drives

My memory was low so I was in the process of archiving files when some of the folders in my Desktop documents folder disappeared. I had begun transferring files into Toast when it happened. The computer had previously been in sleep mode during the night.
When I searched for the contents using Find File. it listed them in the same place or as unavailable. I restarted, turned off extensions I didn't need, transferred some of the files still showing on my HD onto my USB JumpDrive for temp storage and rebuilt the desktop. When I ran Norton Disk Doctor, it found problems with the Catalog B-tree, which makes sense since it's the "data structure where files are stored on your disk." Norton was able to fix some of the issues, but not all, and was not able to finish scanning the disk. I ran it again, with the same results and also checked out UnErase.
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I currently have 247 MB available. Luckily, I had previously made a backup of everything except my Outlook Express identity folder, for my e-mail, which is too large to back up to CD. So I'm hoping this will not crash in the interim!
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Hi Leslie,
It would be helpful to know a bit more about the computer, such as the size of the drive you have and the OS you are running. I believe general guidelines are to not fill your drive to more than 90% capacity.
Norton Utilities receives some bad rap on this forum, but sometimes it's all you have (Diskwarrior and TechTool are usually recommended). With NU you particularly have to be careful to use versions that are at least the same generation as the OS you are using. I usually go with Disk First Aid as a first shot since it's made by the people who made the computer.
Assuming you're okay with the situation about the recovered files then I'd say starting with a clean drive would be good. Keep in mind though that the files will be gone for good. I don't know if you need to really zero the drive, just reinitialize ("erase") it. I'd also run some utility to check the integrity of the drive to see whether the problem was due to the drive starting to fail. You might be able to continue to work with it as-is but it would be nice to know why your drive got corrupted in the first place. At least clear up some room. You might also want to check on the fragmentation status and at least do a clean OS install just in case some of those files are on their way out too.
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Lost Folders on External Hard Drive

Hi all,
Today I tried to delete my time machine back up to free some space on my external hard drive. Unfortunately my mac would not delete the back up via Trash, so as a last resort I ran a terminal to locate the folder within my external hard drive and force delete it. I couldn't just delete the partition because i had lots of other stuff on the external hard drive.
After the terminal command was successful ,deleting only what was in the trash folder within my external hard drive, the back up was deleted. However at the same time three folders have disappeared from within my external hard drive all containing films i was storing. Strangely all three of the folders that appear to have been deleted had an asterisk infront of the folder name.
I can't figure out what has happened to them and how they were seemingly deleted. If anyone could shed any light on this issue i would be very grateful.

That's the cause of the problem.
The way you described it in your first post, makes me think the files could still be on your external HD.
The problem is, you moved the files without letting iTunes know.
The locations are stored in the 'iTunes Library' file (more info here).
If you move them using the Finder the links are lost.
You should have changed the 'iTunes Music folder' (Preferences>Advanced>General) to the music folder on your external HD and then use the 'Consolidate Library...' command from the Advanced menu in the menubar.
That copies all music to the 'iTunes Music folder' as set in the preferences.
It won't help now, but you can use this procedure next time.
It's also important to understand that when iTunes doesn't find the Library at startup, it will reset the 'iTunes Music folder' to the default location on the internal HD. Always connect your ext. HD before running iTunes.
Now to the possible rescue.
If the files are still on your ext. HD, you can use a script to restore the dead links.
Go to www.dougscripts.com and type 'dead' (without the quotes) in the 'search scripts:' field. Of the scripts that will be found, 'iTunes Track CPR v1.3' looks the logical choice to do the job.
Hope this helps.
M
17' iMac fp 800 MHz 768 MB RAM Mac OS X (10.3.9) Several ext. HD (backup and data)

External hard drive folders disappear

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