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.

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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.
You'll see all your mounted volumes in the Finder window. Drag the required one to the Devices list in the sidebar.

External Hard Drives Mysteriously Losing Read/Write Privileges...

I am currently running 10.5.8 OSX and for some reason all of my external hard drives are mysteriously losing their Read/Write privileges on my Mac Pro. I have not altered anything within my account or settings to my knowledge. I continue to have to unmount the drive, connect it to my MacBook Pro, reset the privileges, then re-mount to the Mac Pro to get it to Read Write. What could be causing this?

HI,
Try repairing disk permissions...
Quit any open applications/programs. Launch Disk Utility. (Applications/Utilities) Select MacintoshHD in the panel on the left, select the FirstAid tab. Click: Repair Disk Permissions. When it's finished from the Menu Bar, Quit Disk Utility and restart your Mac. If you see a long list of "messages" in the permissions window, it's ok. That can be ignored. As long as you see, "Permissions Repair Complete" when it's finished... you're done. Quit Disk Utility and restart your Mac.
Carolyn

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 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.

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.

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 :((
I've just tried connecting the disk to a neighbour's mac (OSX) and same problem, even using his cables. But i can still get the mystery volume to mount on a OS9 desktop...
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 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.
Its a Seagate FreeAgent Desktop harddrive.
What can I do?

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?
Thanks..

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.
Best wishes,
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
When I enter "diskutil list" in Terminal I get the following:
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            499.8 GB   disk0s2
Any more suggestions? Or is my drive ready for the recycling bin?
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)
First, you should always Repair Permissions in Disk Utility before and after any update; I would do that now. If you installed your update with FireWire plugged in, your Mac may not recognize it anymore.
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!
Good Luck!
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.
I have removed the HD from the enclosure and purchased a docking station for it (3.5" SATA). When I plug it in to the laptop it disconnects itself straight away before it is visible. With the windows computers it installs the drivers and says that the device is ready to use, then disconnects before it shows up.
As the HD is not visible there is no option to re-format or anything.
This is very frustrating as I was using the HD with no issues and it randomly disconnected and I have not been able to access since.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Bruce

My Western Digital external hard drive suddenly stopped showing up on my Macbook Pro and disappeared from Disk Utility. It works on a PC.

My Western Digital external hard drive suddenly stopped showing up on my macbook pro and it disappeared from disk utility. I have tried making invisible files visible but nothing has worked and my hard drive shows up on a PC but not my Mac anymore.

What is the manufacturer of the external and how old is it? Does it have its own AC power supply or is it USB bus powered?

Why have my TV shows on my external hard drive disappeared when I've deleted them from my iTunes library?

I am trying to free up space on my internal hard drive (MacBook Air). I copied my iTunes TV shows onto an external hard drive, following all instructions carefully. They were all there on the external drive - I opened a few and they played perfectly. I then went back into iTunes and deleted the shows, then emptied trash. When I went back into my external hard drive, all the TV shows had disappeared! Am now in process (yawn) of downloading the shows again onto my laptop, rather defeating my object of freeing up space. Can anyone tell me what I have done wrong?

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

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.

External hard drive mysteriously disappeared.

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