External hard drive not on desktop

niel and limnos began helping me with this problem last week but it solved itself when i left my laptop shut down overnight. now the problem is back.
until today the external drive turned up in disk utility and was verified. now it does not show up anywhere. i have a maxtor and western, once they both showed up - which is what i need because i want to transfer all files on the western to the maxtor - most of the time, only one showed up. i disconnected one thinking that 2 connected external hard drives might demanded too much from the computer. but now, with only one connected for 2 days, no hard drive shows up anywhere. i tried shut down, restart, no hard drive. please help.

Do you repair permissions & reboot after every opdate?
At this point I think you should get Applejack...
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15667/applejack
After installing, reboot holding down CMD+s, (+s), then when the DOS like prompt shows, type in...
applejack AUTO
Then let it do all 5 of it's things.
At least it'll eliminate some questions if it doesn't fix it.
The 6 things it does are...
Correct any Disk problems.
Repair Permissions.
Clear out Cache Files.
Repair/check several plist files.
Dump the VM files for a fresh start.
Trash old Log files.
First reboot will be slower, sometimes 2 or 3 restarts will be required for full benefit... my guess is files relying upon other files relying upon other files!
Disconnect the USB cable from any Uninterruptible Power Supply so the system doesn't shut down in the middle of the process.

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External hard drives not on desktop

None of my external hard drives are showing up on the desktop. I can see them in finder and disk utilities so the card is working correctly. Any suggestions?
mac pro quad 10.6.7, 5 external drives.
Thanks

Nope, tried already that (default). I got a couple of external HDDs (WD 1 TB, WD 500 GB) loaded with tons of personal data, used to run flawlessly but after Lion seems it won't read them. They do show grayed (not mounted) on the Disk Utility but nothing on the Finder windows. I can read/write and use my data on any other computer, PC, Laptop, Mac Book, etc but not mine. Only diff: I installed Lion.
Help needed please!

External Hard drive not on desktop anymore...

I have a Maxtor 300gb external hard drive connected via USB to my G5 - it contains all my JPEG and Raw files and is a vital item right now as I'm in the middle of a uni arts degree....
It powers up normally but has disappeared from my desktop. I've also tried it on a G4 and a Power book with the same unhappy result. I plugged it in to a Windows PC running XP and it is recognised (Make and model of drive recognised) but I cannot access any data on it as it shows up as unformatted in windows. It was a normal Mac HFS formatted drive.
Any ideas please? I have bought Disk Warrior but unsure as to whether this will help at all.
I'm loathe to send it away for expensive data recovery if I can do something myself...

You could check whether the drivers are up-to-date.
You could try shutting the G5 down and disconnecting everything, including the mains, for 30mins. to reset, and then plugging the drive into one of the rear ports on the G5 with nothing else connected except wired keyboard and mouse and display - as the G5 USB has been known to be picky sometimes.
You could try DiskWarrior - but if it can't find the drive, it may not help much.

Projects from external hard drive not opening on desktop. Please help.

I use my external hard drive to create, edit and save all my imovie projects. In this external drive I have all my raw clips, events, projects etc.
My home computer is my primary place of work, and I am now trying to open a half edited project from my external hard drive on my daughter's mac. Note this project was saved in imovie 8 and she has imovie 9, although I cannot see this being an issue.
Can anyone else suggest why imovie only opens my events, but doesn't open the project in the project library. I have tried copying the .rcproject from the external hard drive to the desktop along with the events, but to no avail. Any further suggestions, I have a pending deadline.
Thanks.

You should be able to get this to work.
I would suggest the following:
1) Move the RCPROJECT file from the desktop to the Movies/iMovie Projects folder.
2) Use the Events on the external drive. Your project will be pointing to the external drive. It will not know how to find anything on the internal drive.
Then restart iMovie.
This should work, as iMovie is forward compatible. However, once you open the project in iMovie 09, you will no longer be able to open it in iMovie 08. (Of course, you could make a copy of it in its current state.)
I am less sure about your events. Your events will be converted to iMovie 09 format. I don't think you will be able to still open them in iMovie 08. You might if you delete all the cache and thumbnail folders and let iMovie 08 regenerate these, but I am not sure. Your best bet is to upgrade to iMovie 09 or better yet, iMovie 11 on your home computer.

Can't move files from my external hard drive to the desktop?

Hi folks, for some reason I am unable to copy files (irrespective of type) from my usb 2 external hard drive to my desktop. This is only a recent thing. Up until a few days ago I was able to transfer files back and forth without problem. Now it is only possible to move unto the harddrive and not the other way around. The harddrive is formatted in Mac OS Extended (journaled). I have tried running disk utility to repair the disc on both external and internal drives, and it advises me that no repairs were necessary. I have also checked the info and read and write is permitted and none of the files are locked. When I attempt drag a file off the harddrive to the desktop the cursor turns into a stop sign (circle with line through it). If I attempt to copy and paste, the file copies and then will not paste as "paste" does not appear in the contextual menu. I have had some limited success by dragging files off the external hard drive to the trash and then dragging then back out of trash unto the desktop. But this only seems to work sometimes?
It would be great if someone could suggest a reason and solution for this. Thank you in advance.
Jono

Sure sounds like permissions are goofed up somewhere. You weren't really clear about exactly what you had checked. Since you can copy TO the drive let's assume things are OK there. How about your Desktop folder? Did you check it with GetInfo to make sure you are the owner and have read and write permissions to the Desktop folder? I have seen these get messed up before.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

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?

Why is my External Hard Drive not showing in Aperture 3.6 Import?

Why is my External Hard Drive not showing in Aperture 3.6 Import?
Only my computer hard drive is and I want to import from an external drive. I have always been able to until I updated to Aperture 3.6 and Yosemite.

Only my computer hard drive is and I want to import from an external drive. I have always been able to until I updated to Aperture 3.6 and Yosemite.
I had the same problem. On the folders on the drive with the Aperture library did show in the Import panel. After I clicked the computer icon in the upper left corner of the Import panel, suddenly all drives appeared.
You can also try to drag the folder you want to import into the Import panel, to point the file chooser to the drive.

I can't import my movies to work on them. They are coming from a external hard drive, not directly from the camera, its type mpeg-e (.mts)

My movies are type MPEG-2
I can't import my movies to work on them. They are coming from a external hard drive, not directly from the camera, its type mpeg-2 (.mts)
What can I do ?

1. Is your external HD connected by firewire?
2. mpeg2 is the final compressed delivery format of a DVD, not intended for editing, and iMovie cannot handle such files, so you need to convert them first:
For that you need mpegStreamclip:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/mpegstreamclip.html
which is free, but you must also have the Apple mpeg2 plugin :
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/
which is a mere $20.

TS3355 I loaded video from an external hard drive to my desktop. How do I import the video into iMovie 09? I tried "Import Camera Archive". Didn't work.

I loaded video from an external hard drive to my desktop. How do I import the video into iMovie 09? I tried "Import Camera Archive". Didn't work.

It depends on the type of video. iMovie will only import video that it can edit.
In general, you would use FILE/IMPORT MOVIE...

External Hard Drive not showing on desktop

Hi,
I'm using a macbook pro, 15", and have been using it with my external hard drive for the past 2 months.
This afternoon, I was using the external, where i have all my music and photos stored, and it was working fine. I left the computer on sleep for about 2 hours (all programs that have stuff on the external I made sure to quit before), and when I got back the "icon" for the back up disk was slightly more "invisible" on my desktop and time machine informed me that the latest back up failed. When I tried to eject it (nothing on the disk was being used) it said it couldnt be ejected because the disk was in use.
I tried to eject again, same thing, so I restarted the computer. When I restarted the computer the external harddrive icon did not show up on my desk top. I tried pulling it out and plugging it in a few times, the disk will start up, but not load onto my desk top.
HELP!!!
the external hard drive is a Western Digital "my Passport"
Thank you!

Danja.schluter wrote:
if I repair the disk, will i lose everything on it?
Running Disk Repair will not harm your data, the idea is to repair and make it functional again.
If successful I would make a back up of that data because you may be skating on thin ice.

External Hard Drive not mounting on Desktop

Hello,
I use a 250 gb Lacie external hard drive (firewire) for backup. For the past week, the external hard drive has mostly not been mounting on the desktop.
I don't think it's a power issue, because after turning the unit on both the light indicating power turns on and I can hear the motor operating.
As indicated on the Lacie web site, I went to disk utility in system preferences and repaired disk permissions for my Mac's hard drive volume. That doesn't seem to have made a difference.
Does anyone have any other suggestions as to what I should do?
Thank you,
Manny

Hi gavvx, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Feel free to start a new topic of your own will get more individualized attention, and many more helpers!
It can be hard to sometimes find where to start a New Topic, so here's the link...
http://discussions.apple.com/post!default.jspa?forumID=758
Did you try highlighting them, then the Mount button in Disk Utility?

External Hard drive not even showing up on my desktop

I am plugging in my external hard drive and nothing happens. Did I do something to erase the whole thing? Why doesn't it show up at all on my desktop?

I get this problem every now and again. I noticed it occurs after being used with a windows pc. For some reason if my external hard drive hasn't been ejected properly when on a windows pc it won't show up on my mac at all, not even in disk utility.
Solution that works for me:
Simply plug it back into a windows pc and properly eject it by right clicking the drive and slecting eject.
If you don't have a pc to hand or can't be bothered boot camping, you can run a virtual instance of windows in parrelles desktop and select the hard drive with the usb devices menu.
Hope this helps someone.

External Hard Drive not appearing on my desktop...

I am encountering a major problem with my Maxtor external hard drive. I have had the drive a few weeks, and everything has been sweet, swwet enough for me to trust it enough to back up 10 years of professional work and irreplacable photos. Today however it has decided to not show up on my desktop, and instead give me the option of initialising it, ejecting it and ignoring because 'my computer can not read it'!!!
I have tried disk utility but get get end of messages and am unable to repair the disk eeven though it says it needs fixing.
My next step has been to download TechTool, which seems to be sticking a 3rd of the way through a disk surface test?
I am pretty desperate as I REALLY don't want to loose what I have on it, so any light anybody can shed would be HUGELY appreciately.
Thanks in advance
s

Some people recommend erasing a drive (write zeros) before using which may pick up and mapout most bad blocks. Then benchmark the drive over various areas with something like intech speedtools QuickBench 3 and Zone Bench.
I like to load some test data to fill the drive to 90% and then erase and start using. but always keep two backups, one of which is off-line so if something happens you still have the alternate, as a minimum.
Are you using TTPro 4.12? there were problems with earlier versions and FW, and, FW is not immune from problems itself, as each OS X upgrade has attested, and updates to Oxford 911/912/922 chipset.
Also, you would not be alone in having trouble with Maxtor One-Touch. A search on http://www.macintouch.com for one, yields some hits. Another good place to look would be
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com
you can also good for Diamond Max 10/11 or Maxline III.
While you can access the data, backup. Maybe look into external SATA, or build your own FW800 912/922/924 drive and case.
I'm no longer a big fan of 3rd party tools, but Disk Warrior is good to have on hand.
And never, ever, fill a drive beyond 80-85%. After 75% you start to lose performance and high fragmentation can be a problem.

External Hard Drive/Not Showing Up on Desktop

I have a G4, running OS X 10.2.8 and recently my kids deleted some important data. So--we bought an external hard drive (WD MyBook 160 GB Essential Edition, which says on the box that it runs 10.2.8 and higher).
We took the external hard drive and the computer to a reputable repair place, the guy there took the hard drive out and using a G6 system, restored what he could to the external hard drive.
We bring it home, plug it in, and the computer is not reading the new external hard drive. I did check in disk utility, and it shows up as a greyed out item on the disk utility.
The external hard drive does show up when hooked up to my husband's office PC.
Any ideas as to why this is happening and how to correct it?
Thanks, Ruth

OK, I figured it out (in case anyone else needs to know) with this information from the Western Digital site:
Macintosh Operating System 10.3.x or earlier will only recognize FAT32 partitions that are smaller than 128-gigabytes. Multiple FAT32 partitions smaller than 128-gigabytes will need to be created in order for Macintosh Operating System 10.3.x or earlier to recognize the partitions. You will need to use a Windows based computer to create FAT32 partitions, as Macintosh does not have the ability to create them.
Macintosh Operating System 10.4.x or later can recognize FAT32 partitions over 128-gigabytes.

External hard drive not on desktop

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