External Hard Drive Mounts & Finder Quits

Upon updating this new iMac to 10.5.2 everything went well until I plugged in a particular LaCie external hard drive. Then the finder and desktop disappeared. Using Disk Utility to unmount the hard drive restored the desktop and finder. Remounting it causes the finder again to disappear. I first updated from 10.5.1 to 10.5.2 via the computer's software updater. I tried running the combo update with no improvement. Another, older, external LaCie hard drive works perfectly fine. I am able to back up files to the suspicious hard drive using Retrospect and I can view files on it from an "open" or "save" menu from an application like Word. And I can open and save files, including to the desktop. But with the drive mounted there is nothing on the desktop.
Is there an obvious way to correct this or is it something that Apple needs to fix, or LaCie?

Is that Lacie drive the one you've setup as your Time Machine backup drive? If so, go into System Preferences->Time Machine and select "Change Disk". In the sheet that appears, click the "None" entry and then click the "Stop Backing Up" button. That should fix it. You can then re-set that drive as the Time Machine volume if you want. Good luck...

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Problem:
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I have a external hard drive connected, Finder will not let me search for files in the external hard drive how do i search in a hard drive

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Clinton

TS1550 Do external hard drives mounted on my Mac get backed up by time machine on a time capsule wireless Apple external back up disk? How can I see what folders have been actually stored in the wireless back up disk?

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Yup. Still not there...only my Mac HD came out...my WD external HD can be detected coz it's the one I'm using for time machine back-up but my Toshiba external HD is still not present/ mounted in finder and I still cannot choose it in disk utility even if it is listed there...

Can't find External Hard Drive on Finder

My external hard drive is no longer visible on the desktop, or in the finder. It appears to still be working, because my sons' iTunes accounts (located on the external) are both working fine. How can I make it appear again?
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Message was edited by: cvw2

I'm having a similar...but slightly different problem.
My external drives (both firewire and usb connected) are showing up just fine in Finder...and I'm able to do all the normal things that I can do on them (moving things around, adding things, copying things, re-naming folders, etc..etc..etc).
BUT, what Finder has indeed stopped doing, is it has stopped showing search results for anything that is located IN these external drives.
For instance, my externals are where ALL of my music is kept. I do a lot of dj'ing, and therefore have quite a bit of music digitized (around 400 gigs)...so I've never kept music on my internal hard drive on the laptop. As well, I have another external USB drive that serves as my hard drive for dj'ing. It goes out with me to gigs, and my dj software reads from it (because music that I would actually play out at gigs is only a percentage of my overall music library, and I certainly don't want to be lugging my main music library hard drive around town all the time).
Anyway, at various times, I end up searching for song files, or album folders, or whatever in Finder...and it has (out of the blue) completely stopped "finding" things in the external drives.
Quite baffling.
Has this happened to anyone else....and/or does anyone know how to fix this?
Thank you!!!
cheers.

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[Solved] External Hard Drive mount point in fstab crashes launch

Hi there,
I have an external hard drive that I'd like to automount when I plug it in. Sometimes it seems to work, but other times I have to manually mount it. In order to make this a little easier, I copied the mounting info into my fstab file so that I could just run:
mount /dir/to/mount
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An obvious work around would be to write a one line script that mounts the drive for me, however, I'd like to learn how to do this correctly. I think the rules have changed a bit with systemd, as I didn't have this problem a few years ago.
Thanks for the help!
Last edited by B-80 (2015-05-17 08:14:08)

B-80 wrote:
Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
Add "nofail" to the options section.
EDIT: ...in /etc/fstab
Thanks for the answer, that fixed it.
You're welcome but I think Mr.Elendig's post gives the actual solution (my proposal is just a workaround -- using fstab for a filesystem that is not permanently attached is sub-optimal)

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Hi, and a warm welcome to the Forums!
What size drive is it?
What format is it? DU, highlight it, then the Info button.

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Hi
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It doesn't make sense.
Anyway, I found the solutions. Download software for solving this problem.
Here is the link:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24481/ntfs-3g

Why won't my external hard drive mount in Disk Utility even when it shows up on the list?

Hey all,
For the last few years I've used a Samsung S2 1TB external harddrive to back up all my files, this includes photos, music and a vast amount of resources required for Uni. However I plugged it in for the first time in about two months and discovered that neither my Macbook Pro (late 2011) or my Mac Mini (early 2013) are able to mount the hard drive.
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Thanks in advance!

Because there's a problem with the disk's directory structure; these are often the result of improperly unplugging drives or forcing a computer to shut down. Proceed as instructed, or try using a more powerful utility such as DiskWarrior to repair it.
(111975)

Cannot see external hard drive in finder even though listed in Disk utility

I have a major problem with my G5 after file vault became corrupted and I had to erase the user account with all my data after consultation with an Apple Store Genius.
I have an external Iomega external back up but the finder does not list it anymore and it does not appear on the desktop. It is seen by disk utility however and I have run disk repair which says its fine. When it is not mounted, the icon next to the hard drive name (in disk utility) is a firewire external drive, but when I do mount it it appears as the unrecognized file type icon (the icon with the piece of paper with a bent corner). It also doesn't show up when I enable hidden folders.
It does however mount on my son's iMac. All my data is on this external disk and its my only copy left.
Please can you help me or point me toward a previous thread. I have tried ejecting it and remounting the HD after turning it off but no luck.
Yours
Mr Desperate

USB and FireWire Quick Assist
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1151?viewlocale=en_US
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
 Cheers, Tom

External hard drive mounting problems :(

I've been using a Western Digital My Book Pro 500GB drive on my G4 (mirror door) with OS X 10.4.8 via FireWire 400 for a long time now, works great. It looks like this:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=242
When I try to connect it to my MacBook Pro (running OS X 10.4.6) via FireWire 400 or USB 2.0, it recognizes the drive, even mounts it (according to Disk Utility), but it does not show up in Finder. It's totally unusable. The icon in disk utility when the drive is mounted, is not a drive icon. It's just like a blank document icon. When I unmount the drive, it shows the drive icon.
It also does not connect to my wife's PowerBook G4 running OS X 10.4.8.
What I've tried:
- I've tried connecting the drive via USB and Firewire
- I've tried shutting down the laptops, and re-booting.
- I've tried zapping the PRAM on them while booting back up.
- I've tried shutting down the hard drive, turning the drive on, waiting, and then connecting the drives again.
- I've tried to access the drive via terminal, and it does not allow me to CD into the drive. It says "permission denied"
- I've tried verifying the disk
- I've tried repairing the disk.
- I've tried Disk Rescue II 1.1 (which allows me to "recover files" but it's a lengthy process, esp for 250GB I have on it, that you have to restore to another hard drive)
Is this a permissions problem? I don't get how come it works with one of my Macs flawlessly, but the other two doesn't allow me access to it.
MacBook Pro Core Duo, G4 PowerMac, PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Sorry, so much I forgot to include that I've done. I forgot some people are dumb and don't use A/C adapters or use FAT32 drives on there Macs.
I re-formatted it a long time ago using Disk Utility Mac OS X Extended Journaled on my G4 Tower (mirror drive door) with Apple Parition Map. I didn't zero it out, but it was brand new FAT32 drive from Western Digital, and nothing was on it when I reformated it to HFS.
I didn't think the problem was Intel chip related, since it doesn't work on the G4 PowerBook either. I'm unfamiliar with GUID parition map vs APL.
Can Intel Macs read off an APL external drive OK?
I'll look into Disk Warrior and see what it thinks.

External Hard Drive Mounts & Finder Quits

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