External hard drive not showing in finder or disk utility

1TB WD external hard drive is not showing in finder sidebar, destop, or disk utility. I have checked and all the preferences are ticked. The disk itself is showing a light and making a whirring sound during start up after being plugged into the power.

Three different external drives, on 2 different MacBook Pros (different ages). One drive with internal power, 2 through USB. Also have a new Solid State External Drive and it does work. The were all working before upgrade to Yosemite.
Have tried multiple USB Cords

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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

External hard drive not recognized in Finder or Disk Utility

Two weeks ago, my 2007 black Macbook stopped recognizing the hard drive. I was told by some IT friends that the controller had likely failed and I needed to purchase a new laptop. I removed the hard drive and placed it into an enclosure (turning it into an external hard drive) and hooked it up to a new Macbook Pro which I purchased a couple days ago. The external hard drive did not show up in Finder or Disk Utility but the light on the enclosure was on and it was making a very soft whirring noise and got warm after a few minutes. I usually backed up the hard drive but, of course, hadn't done it in a couple of weeks before it died so everything I worked on in that time is lost to me at the moment. I'm trying to avoid paying tons of money for a data recovery service so any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

That whirring noise might be due to physical damage on the disk. I know data recovery services are costly but that remains only the solution for damaged HDD. You can get latest quotes on services from different dealers. Proceed only when your data is very important to be recovered.

External Hard drive not showing on finder or desktop

My hard drive is only a week old and was working fine until i plugged it in today. The hard drive light still lights up when plugged in and it works when i plug it into a tv and my roommates pc.
However on my macbook the hard drive won't show up in finder or the desktop... it shows in disk utility but options to verify disk etc are 'greyed out' so i can't click on them. THere isn't anything wrong with the hard drive because as stated above it worked on other devices.
Other usb and external hard drives are being recognosed fine and show up in finder.
Can anyone please help?

Same problem here. Sometimes drives disappear completely from the Finder sidebar. Sometimes they just gray out. Quick 'n' easy fix: In Terminal, type:
chflags nohidden /Volumes/MY_PARTITION
(where MY_PARTITION is the name of the drive you can't find).
For the UNIX impaired, if there's a space in your drive name, you can use "\ " to represent the space (no quotes, just the backslash and the space). So for example, Macintosh HD would be typed:
Macintosh\ HD

External hard drive not accessible, but visible in Disk Utility

Hello All,
I recently did a clean install on my iMac, and I cannot access my external hard drive through Finder. The system does detect the hard drive in Disk Utiliy, however Finder cannot see it. I also tried About this Mac > More info > Storage and it does not show up there. I checked my Finder settings per other threads and Finder is set to show all HD's.
The Disk Utility allows me to "Eject" the drive without any problems, but I cannot access anything on it.
When I plug this in Windows, I hear the Windows USB chime. I do not think that the HD went bad because it has not worked since I did a clean install on my iMac, and of course, all my documents are backed up to this drive.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.

There is recovery software such as FileSalvage which may be able to find something.
http://subrosasoft.com/software/filesalvage
You can download a demo copy which will tell you what it will recover if that appears worth while you must pay for to recover the files.
You are going to need another disk for FileSalvage to recover the files. If should be at least as large as the disk being recovered.
Allan

External Hard Drive not showing in finder

Hi,
I have done an unsafe eject two weeks ago of my external hd. When I try to connect the hd again it doesn't show in finder. I've tried the disk utility but that doesn't work. Are there any other ways to get the hd working again?

I had this problem a few days ago…
I solved using the following steps:
1) Disconnect the external HD from everything, including power.
2) Shut down the Mac.
3) Reboot the Mac from the Installer disc.
4) Run Disc Utility, first "Repair Disc" then "Repair Permissions" on the internal HD (which actually threw up a total of 4 errors).
5) Restart the Mac from the internal HD.
6) Reconnect the external HD.
At this point, mine connected perfectly and enabled me to run Time Machine.
However, the next step would have been:
7) Run Disc Utility from the internal HD, use it to mount the external, and then do Repair Disc.
If that fails, then as Kappy says, a reformat of the external is the only remaining option.
Good luck
Archie

External Hard-Drive not showing in Finder despite no errors in Disk Utility.

I have tried to follow certain steps as described in this community but I am at a loss on next steps here. I have a wester digital that I have used for Time MAchne which all of a sudden does not appear on Finder. I have run Disk Utility and I can see it there and run the verify and repart and it reports no problems...

Here is the results of Terminal Query:
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            120.5 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS My Passport             999.8 GB   disk1s2

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.

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.

My external hard drive not showing up

Hello,
My external hard drive is not showing up on my desktop. I went to finder & preferences>general and made sure I checked "show these items" and checked hard drives. I even unchecked it because I have 2 other external hard drives. When I checked the hard drive box the other 2 hard drives appeared but the third hard drive did not. The hard drive not showing up on my desk top does show up when I double click my system hard drive & can be opened from there, but I want to see it on my desk top. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

This procedure is a diagnostic test. It makes no changes to your data.
Please triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
ls -@Oaen /V* | pbcopy
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing the key combination command-V. I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting.
Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) to appear below what you entered.
The output of the command will be automatically copied to the Clipboard. If the command produced no output, the Clipboard will be empty. Paste into a reply to this message.
The Terminal window doesn't show the output. Please don't copy anything from there.
If any personal information appears in the output, anonymize before posting, but don’t remove the context.

External Hard Drives not showing

I have 2 external hard drives connected using FW 800, a Western Digital 500TB & a Seagate 500TB. The Western Digital has a habit of freezing and the last time this happened I powered down the iMac. When I re started the iMac neither external hard drive is showing on the desk top what's happening and how do I cure this?

HI MIke,
To start with if your forum profile is correct you need to update your system softare to 10.5.8. Go here and install the v10.5.8 Combo Update
Also, in the Finder from the Menu Bar click Finder/Preferences and select the General tab.
Select the 2nd button and relaunch the Finder.
Carolyn

External hard drive not showing up in finder

Hi,
I have a LaCie Rikiki USB 3.0 1TB external hard drive for more than a year or so (probably longer than that). The hard drive has 2 partitions with one formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) <named MAC> and the other MS-DOS (FAT) for windows <named as FOR WIN>.
The MAC volume has been working fine yesterday then suddenly it just started to transfer files very slowly and had problems unmounting when I am done transferring files saying it is in used by an application when it is not. So I had to force eject the the MAC volume while the FOR WIN volume ejected fine. However, here comes the problem.
Once I reconnected the external hard drive, it does show up in disk utility but not in finder. Also, the FOR WIN volume showed up as disk1s2 in disk utility. I tried using disk utility's verify and repair disk and couldn't fix the FOR WIN volume so I gave up on that since I don't have any important files in that volume. On the other hand, I could run verify and repair to get the MAC volume mounted. Through that I could get some files copied but soon finder hangs on me and wouldn't open even after relaunch which led me to disconnect the drive by just unplugging the USB. Now when I connect the drive, it again shows up in disk utility but not mounted and when I try to use the verify and repair all I get is:
Verifying Volume "MAC"
checking file system
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
Verify and Repair volume "MAC"
Checking file system
Volume repair complete
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required
and it's stuck at "updating boot support........" I've let it ran for like 6 hours and it's still at that stage. Had enough, closed disk utility and reconnected the harddrive and it's still the same showing up in disk utility but not mounting.
Could anyone please help? Thank you!

tonydenson wrote:
That's great thanks. cmd-shift-c brings it back.
then it should also show up on the desktop. go to finder preferences->general and check the boxes to show external and CD drives.
Incidentally, I now have the opposite problem, I can't eject it. I get the message that the disk is in use, try quitting applications. I quite often get this with mounted drives or flash drives. Is there any way of finding out which particular application has a given device open ?
sometimes spotlight keeps drives busy.
you can see what's doing it by running the following terminal command
sudo lsof /volumes/lacie

External hard drive not showing up on AFP server

hi
i have successfully connected a couple of times to a firewire external hard drive connected to my dad's iMac over the internet (AFP server) for the purpose of backing up some files, but now it doesn't show up at all as a volume when i connect to his iMac through finder/go/connect to server. i don't believe that any settings were changed, so don't understand why it isn't showing up. currently when i get info on the drive 'shared folder' is checked, everyone has permission to read and write and 'ignore ownership on this volume' is checked, and file sharing is enabled in system preferences/sharing.
does anyone have any ideas of what i can do to get the drive to show up again?
thanks
nick

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 showing up on Macbook

My External Hard Drive with my Time Machine Backups on it are no longer showing up on my Macbook. The disk shows up on disk utility. Also when I boot into Recovery Mode and click on restore from Time Machine Backups my backups are listed.
I've tried to erase the disk and start fresh, but Disk Utility will not unmount the disk.

Choose Preferences from the Finder menu, click on the Desktop and Sidebar tabs, and check the boxes for it.
(111295)

External hard drive not visible in Finder, but is operating

iMac, 2 Gb RAM, Snow Leopard 10.6.4.
It has 4 external USB drives attached through a powered hub. All of a sudden, after about a year, one of them no longer shows up in ‘Finder’. However, all four drives have an icon on the desktop. The drive is visible and verifiable in ‘Disk Utility’. Double clicking the desktop icon opens the drive and I can copy a file from it. iTunes can see it. From a Macbook’s ‘Finder’, over WiFi, I can see and copy files to and from the drive. Finder Preferences shows nothing amiss. I’ve shut down and restarted the iMac several times with no change. The drive just does not show up in Finder on the host iMac.
Searching this forum has not helped. Any suggestions?
Max

Well, this is embarrassing. A suggestion from an older thread on Macrumors.com called "Hard Drive does not appear in Finder / Desktop", solved this problem. Simply drag the missing drive icon from the desktop to Finder! Perseverance and different search wording AND reading a lot of stuff pays off.
If other's problem is not solved with this fix, you might benefit from this 10.5-based thread. They also mention an Apple 10.5 fix. Both URL's below.
The op's problem was that the drive did not appear in Finder OR the desktop but was operational. There was a lot of in-depth information with this fix embedded.
Thanks for the interest and suggestions.
Max
http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-209905.html
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA25203?viewlocale=en_US

External hard drive not showing in finder or disk utility

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