External hard drive not seen in disk utility but can be seen in system profiler

HI
i have a 500gb western digital my passport, its been working fine, since i have used it on a windows machine, i can no longer get it to be recognised in finder. The light is flashing on the side and i can see it under USB in sytem profiler. I cant see it in disk utility. i cant format as it has photos etc loaded
cheers

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

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External hard drive not visible in disk utility or finder

Hi all,
I have had a good look through previous discussions and I can't seem to find an issue relevant to mine.
My external hard drive has 2 partitions (1 time machine back up, 1 general hard drive). The issue is that the HD is running when it is plugged in however it is not visible in either disk utility or finder.
I am running OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) on a 2010 MacBook Pro. I also have parallels desktop running windows 7. When I boot windows and plug in the HD I usually get the option to mount the HD to either OS X or Windows. With this issue the option window appears for a split second (not enough time to select either) and then disappears. It seems that the HD may be ejecting itself as soon as it is registered by the computer. I have tried using a different power cable for the HD and also a different usb cable, this doesn't help.
The external HD is a Samsung D3 Station, which i have had for 6 months now and never had an issue with.
Any help is appreciated
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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

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I have a MacBook Pro (from 2011) and I'm running OS X 10.9.5. I have an old Iomega external hard drive. I'm not certain but this thing might be about 3-4 years old? When I connect the drive to my MBP, it shows up in Finder under Devices. But what appears is the Windows disk utility that is pre-loaded on the drive. The actual drive does not appear and I can't move files onto it in Finder.
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When I connect a new Eagle/Consus W-Series external hard drive enclosure to my 15" PB, the hard drive doesn't show-up in the left hand pane of the Disk Utility window. The only thing that shows is the drive in the PB. The hard drive in the enclosure is a WD SATA and is connected via USB cable. The same thing happens, or doesn't happen, when I'm connected via ethernet to my G5 2.3GHz Dual Core: when I open Disk Utility on the PB, the drive on the G5 doesn't show. What I'm trying to attempt is to mirror/clone Tiger from my PB onto the new, to me, G5 using SuperDuper.

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When the G5 is connected, via ethernet to my PB, the hard drive does not show-up in the PB's disk utility pane.
The G5 doesn't have a hard drive in it now, is that correct? So why connect it via Ethernet to the Powerbook?
If you're trying to clone the Powerbook's hard drive onto the G5's drive inside the external enclosure, all that needs to be connected is the external enclosure to the Powerbook, via USB cable. The G5 itself isn't involved in that process at all. When the G5's drive is in the enclosure and connected to the Powerbook, does it appear in Disk Utility on the Powerbook? If not, see my previous suggestions, with the exception of my comment about it not working with either computer.
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While the hard drive is in the external enclosure, I can hear it spinning, and am assuming that all the connections are working properly.
If the drive spins, you can be sure it's getting power, and that's good. But you can't safely conclude from that that any or all of the data connections are working properly; in fact the evidence suggests the contrary.
In short, there may be not one but two problems at work here: incorrect sharing settings when the two computers are networked, and a bad cable, connection, or enclosure when the drive is connected to the Powerbook via USB.
EDIT: Let me also add that if the only Tiger installer discs you have are the ones that came with the Powerbook, then having copies of that Tiger installation on both of your computers would be a violation of the software license that accompanied those discs, which entitles you to have Tiger installed on only one computer at a time. If that's the case, you should really buy a retail Tiger installer disc to use on the G5.
Message was edited by: eww

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External hard drive not seen in disk utility but can be seen in system profiler

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