External hard drive not found when holding option key at startup

So here's the deal. My MacBooks DVD drive crappedmout. I opened up to check that the drive was hooked up correctly and all. Looked fine so I put it all back together and tuned on the Mac. My hard drive wasn't recognized so I Got the ? Flashing folder so I plugged in my external USB to run the disc utility and restore the hard drive (I have the startup discs on there as my dvdrom won't read anymore). Turned it on, held down option (with external plugged in and on) and the mouse came up to select what I wanted to boot from, but nothing showed up. I can't see the device at all. Keyboard seems to be working fine as well as the track pad. I also plugged in a USB mouse to check my USB ports and the mouse worked fine. Would love any help on this. Need the computer salvaged (hopefully) since I don't have the money to get a new one at current. Thanks for the help! (ps on an I touch if there are misspellings.)

Apparently, you unhooked something or other. Open it up again and check at the computing hardware forums for you machine. If still no go, then it's time to visit a repair station.

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External hard drive not appearing when entering time machine.

Why does my external hard drive back up on time machine ok, but when I enter time machine (and the external device isn't plugged in) i can't see it?
It appears in time machine fine when the external drive is plugged in, but just not if it's been ejected or
I want to have the ext drive backed up in case I lose it or it corrupts....and if that happens I won't be able to plug it in to see the drive in TM - does that make sense?
I am running OSX 10.9.3 on a Mid 2010 Mac Book Pro. The external drive is a samsung and is formatted to Mac OS Extended (journaled). Time Machine is a standard Apple one and has been working fine for a couple of years

Try holding down the Option Key when selecting the Time Machine menu, then select Brows Other Time Machine Disks. See if you can then browse the backup of that drive. The normal Time Machine display is kind of a “live” restore point thing, if that makes sense.
I’m not sure if there is anything in Pondini’s FAQ, but you might peruse it and see if he discusses that issue: http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

External Hard Drive Not recognized when trying to boot from it.

So I am trying to boot from my external hard drive through firewire but my computer doesn't seem to recognize the external. There is some problem with my Macbook not booting up correctly and I want to backup my data before reinstalling Tiger. They did this at the Apple store and ran disk utility on it my Macbooks hard drive. I could access all my data, but now when I get home and plug in my hard drive, hold down option after booting, the only drive that pops up is the Mac HD. I read somewhere to try partitioning the external drive as Mac Journaled and I did so with my working Macbook Pro. Any ideas whats going on?

Well i got most of my information off the old one, now I am trying to reinstall Tiger to the MacBook. Problem is I initially tried to do an archive install and the install kept failing after the second disc when it asked for the second install disc.
The people at the Apple store suggested that I try to do a wipe of the hard drive and install. Now when I put in the Disc 1 install disc and boot from the cd drive it just sits for a while and then ejects disc 1 and goes back to the place where the install failed from before ie: it keeps asking for the second install disc.
I can't figure out a way to get around this and just do a clean install on the machine. Any thoughts would be great.

External hard drive not found in mavericks. help

Hi
I have a macbook air (mid 2012) running the latest version of OS X Mavericks. I had to repair my flash storage in an Apple Retail Store to get MAvericks installed. Ever since I've had Mavericks, my two 1TB usb 3 external hard drives (one is samsung, one is toshiba) are not showing up in Finder or on the Desktop.
They showed up and worked fine in Mountain Lion but they haven't worked ever since the upgrade. I've verifyed and tried to mount the disks in disk utility but it says they can't be mounted. Anybody else had this problem and how to fix it?
I can't really repair or rease them because they are full and I don't have a backup for them.

In finder preferences you can hide or show the mounted disks on the desktop, is that what you need?
What error shows when you try to mount them?

External Hard Drive Not Found in Finder

I have an Oxford 120gb external hard drive that I am using with my PPC iMac G5. It is connected via firewire. My computer is not showing the drive on my desktop like it normally does. I have tried using a different firewire cord, using a different firewire port, etc. After booting up the drive, System Profiler indicates that the drive is there. It gives me all the information about the drive. What could be causing this, and are there any possible solutions? It's freaking me out, because I haven't backed up our digital photos in probably 5 months or so! Any help is GREATLY appreciated!
PS - I've tried restarting the drive and the computer/connectng the cord in every combination I can think of, still to no avail!

The good news is that I think I'm narrowing down what my problem is. The bad news is that I've got a huge video project due next Sunday and I'm not able to transfer video from my Canon GL2 video camera to my computer!
I am now putting it together that neither firewire port is working. The reason I say this is because I've tried my external HD in both ports, using two different firewire cords. AND I have tried capturing video to my computer using two different video cameras, and on both firewire ports.
I've trashed the old quicktime receipts and installed the newest version. I'm on OSX 10.4.9. I've also done the "turn everything off, unplug everything, drink a guinness (or two), sit for 30 minutes, plug it back in, plug the power cord back in while simultaneously holding down the power button, then hitting the power button". Still nothing but the good old "maximum Speed: Up to 400 Mb/sec!"
Here's what is odd. After trying the Guinness method once, it worked. So I was finally able to start capturing video. While capturing, I hit a break in the sequence, and this somehow kicked me back off the firewire port.
My external drive is showing up in Disk Utility, and will now usually show up in system profiler, but only in profiler if the camera is not also plugged in the firewire.
ALL that to say, even if this is something that can be fixed by Mac's repair program, I'm still screwed on my project. Any other ways I could at least get the video from my GL2 onto my computer? In crisis mode...
Also, are there any details available online on how to open up an iMac to reset the SMU? Or perhaps a PRAM reset? I've never "been inside", but am more than willing to try if I had a proper walkthrough on how to do it (what to look for, etc.). I know the link in the response above talks about how to do it from outside of the Mac, but I've also heard talk of opening the case and looking for the logic board...

External hard drive not found on macbook pro

I have a lacie 2tb external hard drive.. It started disconnecting itself randomly. I purchased a new cable for it. The problem stopped for a short time.. then it started up, and now the hard drive won't appear on my macbook pro. Ive tried disk utility initially it was there.. but now its no where to be found. the people at lacie seem to think the drive has failed.. Any ideas?

Hard drives can fail at any time... but, as I said, it could be that the SATA controller in the enclosure has gone belly-up. You should be able to take the drive to a standard computer repair shop and see if they can remove the drive from the enclosure, put it in a dock and see if the drive is mountable. It's a 50/50 chance but it shouldn't cost much and should be the first step before taking the unit into a more expensive data recovery facility.
Good luck,
Clinton
BTW: My LaCie drives have 3 year and 5 year warranties, respectively - you may want to see if yours qualifies.

External hard drive not found

I finally ventured into OS X territory. Before doing so, I backed up (drag and drop) everything onto a mobile 80 GB USB Western Digital hard drive. The backup was a success, and installing OS 10.0.4 went fine, but I cannot locate the hard drive. When the USB is plugged in upon startup, nothing comes up. If I plug it in after starting up, it says something like "OS X does not recognize some of the files ..." and gives me the option to continue or initialize with Disk First Aid. I didn't want to initialze because I thought that would erase everything. I read in some of the other posts that 10.0.4 isn't worth much and I plan on going up to at least 10.2 within the week. Is this a 10.0.4 issue that could be resolved by upgrading?

Hi Kat,
I went to disk utility, and my drive is listed under devices, but is not highlighted, so I cannot click on it.
I am wondering if it has something to do with the new system update
Possibly. Can you boot from an earlier install disk?
If the drive is spinning up and can't be selected I've had good luck retrieving files with Data Rescue II. It's free to demo and you can download 5 MB for free.
Richard

External hard drive not found anymore after wrong disconnection?

First time there was no problem and used external hd. After disconnecting the wrong way the mac can't recognise the exteranl HD anymore.
On my other pc it works fine. What happend and how to restore?
Dirk

have you shut down or restarted your computer since last you pulled out the hard drive?
are you connecting it via firewire or usb
go into disk utility when you have your HD plugged in and you will see it there, right click it and hit mount. it should come up.
if you are using firewire, or usb, you might want to not just pull them out without first ejecting it. I've heard, specifically with firewire, that this could fry your whole logic board.

External Hard-drive - not found in Finder/Desktop

I've got a 1TB Toshiba hard-drive. When I connect it to my laptop, I can't find it in Finder or on the Desktop. I can find it in Disk Utility though, and it lights up and sounds like normal (that really really soft whirrring sound)
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I've got a lot on it that I don't want to lose...
Cheers!

Your Finder Preferences may need to be modified.
Was this HDD used with your Mac previously or with a PC? If the latter, then the format needs to be addressed. If you reformat it for Mac or a common format for both Mac and PC, all user data will be erased. You may have to copy the data to another HDD or use an application such as Paragon:
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/
Ciao.

Hard Drives Not Found When Exporting Photos

I'm running 64 bit Lightroom 3.5 on Windows 7. I've been using Lightroom for about 2 years, this is a problem that just came up this weekend.
When in the Develop module and selecting Export and selecting Export Location and a folder to export to, the dialog box now only shows me the Desktop and my User folder - it does not show either of the two hard disks in my PC. These disks do show up in Windows Explorer and the Library module is able to find these disks and load the photos on them.
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This is a know problem when there are too many objects on the desktop. See here for solutions.
Beat

Why does my external Hard Drive not save album artwork? Help!

I have quite a lot of music saved digitally, so to save space I have been storing it on an external hard drive. Some of the music does not have any artwork attached (and does not download any when I select 'get album artwork').
So, as an example, starting with the music on iTunes, I have manually added some artwork via the 'Get info' option.
I then saved the music to my external hard drive.
However, when I next transfer the same album back onto iTunes, none of the artwork has been saved.
Why is this? And how can it be corrected?
Thank you!

Hi,
thanks for the reply, limnos, But let me explain: I have about 80gb-100gb of music.
I can't keep all of this on my computer (on iTunes) as it simply takes up too much space for the rest of my computer to run at a decent speed.
I therefore use my hard drive as a kind of library, where i store my music and occasionally transfer some music onto iTunes to listen to, and then transfer it back whe I'm done. Do you see?
I have done a bit more exploring and I think maybe I only have a problem with artwork 'disappearing' when it is albums that I have requested 'get album artwork'. i.e. the artwork downloads onto an album; then i copy the album onto my hard drive for storage; then when i want to play the album again and copy it back onto itunes, the artwork has been lost.
Do you know why?

External hard drive not recognized... help please.

okay, well here is the story:
my iBook G4 had its stock 30gb hard drive in it and it was running extremely low on space. so i figured i didn't want to carry around an external hard drive, therefore i would buy an internal hard drive an install it. so i purchased a new 2.5" 80gb hard drive and called up the local apple store. they told me that although it was under warranty, that it did not cover hard drive installation. so i looked it up online and found step by step instructions to install the hard drive. so after lots of hard work and many screws, i installed the new hard drive successfully... but i still had this perfect 30gb hard drive. i thought maybe to save a few bucks i could turn it into a usb external hard drive. i found an enclosure for the hard drive and a usb 2.0 cable and plugged it into my ibook. it was recognized and everything. i put some files on the external hard drive and transferred it to another mac. this is where the trouble started. i plugged the hard drive into a PowerMac G4, and it was not recognized... so i tried it on a different mac. this time on a PowerBook G4, but no luck. this issue has been troubling me for a few weeks. but then i tried it on a similar iBook G4... and it was recognized. but i don't know why it was only recognized only on the iBook G4 (not the same iBook G4 it was pulled out of) and no other macs.
does anybody have any ideas what we can do to get this hard drive to be recognized by other macs?
any of even the smallest ideas would be greatly appreciated.
thanks,
tyler
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

I can walk you through formatting the hard drive:
1. Hook it up to an iBook that recognizes it.
2. Go into your Applications folder, then scroll down to Utilities. Open Utilities and scroll down a bit and you should see Disk Utility. Double-click.
3. On the left side you should see your internal hard drive and your external one. Each hard drive will have a sub-catagory with the partition indented.
4. Your external hard drive will probably be the second catagory. Click it.
5. In the center-top you should see the tabs First Aid, Erase, Partition, RAID, and Restore. Click the Erase tab.
6. You should see Volume Format: and then a drop down menu, and Name: and a text box. Type in the name you want the external hard drive to be named.
7. In the drop down menu, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
8. Then, simply click Erase, watch the progress and it should be good to go!!
Hope I helped you out. Oh, and it might be the enclosure...and also what OS's? Since it's USB it is probably using a USB Mass Storage driver. Mac-wise, if formatting doesn't help, I would get a FireWire enclosure because FireWire is much faster than just USB 2.0. Oh, thats nother thing...Is the enclosure Hi-Speed USB? If it isn't, I would definitely get a FireWire one...If it is, the PowerMac G4 doesn't have Hi-Speed so you're not taking full advantage..Just some insight
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3) 512 MB Ram, CD-RW Combo Drive, 40 Gig HD, bought in October of 2005...
Message was edited by: Hilary_Rose

External hard drive not recognized in imovie 09 - ! - in a yellow triangle

i'm new to imovie and want to save space on my hard drive by saving files in an external drive
- i'm only able to import to the computer hard drive... not to the external hard drive.
- i can archive video files from the cam to the my external hard drive (500gig passport)
- when i go to import to the the same external drive... the drive is not available in the +"save to"+ drop down menu...only the computer hard drive.
- the external drive shows up in the +"event library"+ window, however it has an +"exclamation point ! in a yellow triangle"+
help!

The external drive must be formatted as Mac OS Extended (journaled). If you drive is currently formatted as FAT32, you can re-format it using Disk Utility in your Applications/Utilities folder.
If you have any current data on the external drive, be sure to back it up before formatting. A format will erase all data that is currently there.
To reformat the drive, open Disk Utility and select the drive. First Partition the drive using GUID (if you have an intel mac, or using Apple Partition Map (if you have some old Power PC macs that will need to access this drive). A single partition is OK.
Then reformat this partition as MacOS Extended (journaled).

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

I am planning on using my time capsule as a network and essentially an external hard drive - not just back up, is this ok?

I am planning on using my time capsule as a network and essentially an external hard drive - not just back up, is this ok?

Most users should use the Time Capsule for backups. This assumes that "original" copies of your data are on the computer and backups of this data are stored on the Time Capsule.
If either the Time Capsule or the hard drive on your computer fails, there are at least copies of your important data on the other drive.
If you are asking if you can place "original" files on the Time Capsule, do you have a plan to backup those files?
If the Time Capsule drive has a problem....and your only copy of your important data is on the Time Capsule....you will lose everything.
If you are asking if this is OK, the answer for most folks would be "no".
Can you clarify if this is what you are asking?

External hard drive not found when holding option key at startup

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