Finder can't see external drive

Whilst trying to set my external drive so that a 'guest' user could not access it, I somehow managed to remove all permissions for myself from that volume. Not being able to access Get Info - Ownership & Permissions, I found an April 07 post from Robert Montgomery and Michael Conniff's reply which successfully cured a similar problem. I copied and pasted Michael's command line instruction into the Terminal window with the following result:
john-herbsts-emac:~ Herby$ chmod u+rwx /Volumes/External\ Hard\ Drive
chmod: /Volumes/External Hard Drive: No such file or directory
When I run Disk Utility, the LaCie external drive shows as mounted and running Repair results in a message after verification that no repairs are necessary.
I'm told that reformatting will fix the problem, however I have an iDVD project on the drive that will be impossible to replace!
What can I do to regain access to this external drive?

Hello Again! Always glad to be of assistance! I read a lot more than I post and learn a lot from the "real" experts like Neil and many others. I never (or at least rarely) have problems myself as my setup has been running 24/7/365 for 4 years but I'm a fanatic about having bootable backups with utilities such as Diskwarrior on them. Glad you got it fixed. Tom

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Can't see external drive in Finder

Hi all - I have been using 2 external drives with my Mac with no issues, but suddenly I can't find them in Finder when I plug into my Mac. I have tried changing the USB cable and different ports and I have clicked the 'external drive' box in Finder preferences. I can see the discs in Disk Utility however. Does anyone have any idea how I could fix this ?
Thanks in advance !

Might be corrupted desktop and Finder preferences ..
Disconnect the external drive.
Open the Finder. From the Finder menu bar click Go > Go to Folder
Type or copy and paste the following:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist
Click Go then move the com.apple.desktop.plist file to the Trash.
Same for ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
Move the com.apple.finder.plist file to the Trash.
Restart your Mac, connect the drive. Go to Finder > Preferences > General
Make sure: External disks is selected.

Can't see external drive on desktop

I have a iomega external hard drive connected via a usb cable. All of a suuden it's disappeared from my desktop. I can't locate it anywhere. It has all my music films, etc and whilst the music still plays via itunes I can't see the hard drive, which I think is full. any ideas?

Verify that you OS configured to display hd icons on the desktop.
finder > preferences.
try a different
-- usb port
-- usb cable
-- computer
Bakup you ituns library.
How old is this drive. I greater than 5 years I'd say it would seem like a hardware problem with the drive.

FCPX can't see external drive

This morning when I started FCPX, it no longer sees one of my Firewire 800 drives. There are projects, events and original camera files on lt. All my other applications see it, it shows up in the Finder, etc. A project on the internal drive that references the original files on the external drive seems to work. The clips show up in the timeline, no red warnngs with yellow triangles. When I try to start FCPX by double clicking on an event or project on the external drive, I can see everything in the event and project windows for of moment, the FCPX stalls as it says it is loading the compressor support and I have to force quit. Any suggestions on how to fix this?
Thanks,
Peter

Try the suggestions in this thread starting off with trashing the preferences.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4131157?tstart=0

Can't see external drive for movie import

Hi gang,
I have all of my iMovie projects on an external hard drive plugged directly by Firewire 2 into my MacPro. When I run iMovie 9.09, I get a beautiful sorted list of all of my projects by year. When I run iMovie 10.0.5., I can't even see the external drive that contains my movies. On the left column of the new iMovie, I have the choices of iPhoto Library, All Events, All Projects, and an iMovie Library that is empty.
How can I see my external drive with all of my long years of iMovie work on it in the new version of iMovie?
Cheers!

Just to respond to the comment above.
Disk formatting and disk access security are two different thing.
An Airport disk can be formatted as HFS+ and both Macs and PCs will be able to access it.
Regarding "Security" which you setup on the Airport Extreme there are two option:
a) "Secure Disks: With accounts": Here each user on your network will only be able to see and access the folders and files they uploaded to the Airport disk themselves. The disk (as hardware) is shared but data is not shared.
b) "With a disk password": Here all users on your network will be able to see and access all folders and files on the Airport disk.
I hope this makes things a little more clear.
Karsten

Can't See External Drive Data

Hi,
I'm brand new to Macs but loving my new iMac and Airport Extreme with one problem... I keep all my music on an External drive and I can't see anything on the drive. It is plugged into an Airport Extreme through a USB hub. I plugged it into the Airport directly and got same result. Printers plugged into the hub work fine.
If I go into the Airport Utility, I can see the that the hard drive exists and appears to have the sharing settings correct (according to other posts here). I can't see it from my PC's either. If I plug the drive into a PC, the other PC's can see all the music. The external drive is a Maxtor 200 gig One Touch.
Any suggestions?

Just to respond to the comment above.
Disk formatting and disk access security are two different thing.
An Airport disk can be formatted as HFS+ and both Macs and PCs will be able to access it.
Regarding "Security" which you setup on the Airport Extreme there are two option:
a) "Secure Disks: With accounts": Here each user on your network will only be able to see and access the folders and files they uploaded to the Airport disk themselves. The disk (as hardware) is shared but data is not shared.
b) "With a disk password": Here all users on your network will be able to see and access all folders and files on the Airport disk.
I hope this makes things a little more clear.
Karsten

Sharepoints - Can't see external drive

Hi all,
I've created a normal share for my external HDD (root directory) and turned on AFS and SMB sharing, "Update share" and a quick restart to make sure it took.
I can't see my external HDD when connecting from another computer. Any idea what I may have missed?
Steve

Okay, here are the answers:
1. Reset to User. Update.
1a) Power cycle all devices. Reboot, restart, whatever. Macs, routers, HDD's.
Now then -
2. Let's go all the way back to the beginning and get some answers:
a) is this a brand-new drive? [1 month old]
b) make/model, please. [Western Digital MyBook Special Edition 500gb]
c) Using what filesystem has it been formatted? [FAT 32]
d) Does it show properly to the mac that it's plugged into? [Shows fine when directly connected to either Mac, or any Windows PC]
e) In Sharepoints, what is the Share Name? [Share name is "IBROX" (all caps)]
f) In Sharepoints the directory should appear something like:
/Volumes/[volume'srealname]
(yes?)
there might be a case-sensitivity issue here. [Yes, this is how it appears in Sharepoints]

Can't see external drive as an option in projects window.

Trying to move projects/events from hard drive to external drive and everything I see on-line support says I should be seeing the drive as an option to drag files into.....there are no drives shown in my projects window, just projects.
I do see the drive at the bottom of the events window but it has a yellow exclamation point alert symbol over it and I can't drag anything to it.
Anyone have advice? TIA

kmchenry8446 wrote:
It says "MS-DOS (FAT32)"
That's your problem.
can I change that or do I have to buy a new external drive?
The drive can easily be reformatted, however in that process everything currenlty on the drive will be erased.
With that caveat in mind, here's a quick overview of how to go about reformtaing using Disk Utility. It's really quite easy.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA24865?viewlocale=en_US
Have a look and if there's something you don't understand, just post back.
Matt

Can't See External Drive on Network

I want to share an external hard drive between two or more computers. My old hard drive (LaCie) just showed up on the network; however, the new (My Book) does not automatically appear. Several people have mentioned Sharepoints as the solution. When I open the Sharepoints, I don't have any idea what I am looking at or what I should be looking for. Can someone please provide me detailed, step-by-step instructions about how to use Sharepoints to share a hard drive among Macs?

Please contact the developer of Sharepoints or visit their website for assistance with their product. You may need to also contact the manufacturer of your external drive for tech support. These discussions only provide user-to-user support for Apple products.
Also you need to provide more extensive information on your network configuration.

Music Server Can't See External Drive Formatted for WIN with Disk Utility.

Is there any reason an external drive formatted for WIN (MS-DOS(FAT)/FAT32 or NTFS w/ NTFS-3G/MacFUSE) with Disk Utility would not work for intended purpose? I have a music server (Bryston BDP-1) that uses an attached USB drive for storage/playback of music and can only read FAT32 or NTFS formatted drives. I've tried both and neither is readable by the BDP-1, yet I have no problem reading/writing to the supplied 2GB Thumb Drive (FAT32), as well as another 2GB Thumb Drive (FAT32). Get Info shows; "FAT32" for all drives formatted as such.
Note: From what I'm told the BDP-1 uses a scaled down version of Linux for it's OS. Isn't that UNIX? Shouldn't it be compatible (Read/Write) with other platforms (i.e, Mac)? Bryston says the reason they use it because it's Open-Source. Does Linux only work FAT32 or NTFS?
I do have Fusion/XP, also access to WIN PC's, but I just hate to use it when I shouldn't have to. It makes no sense why the drive can't be read by the BDP-1 when formatted for WIN under OS X.
And there was one other issue, after the third try to format fro WIN the external drive suddenly began making faint clicking sounds instead of a spinning drive sound only when plugged into BDP-1 USB port. But it works fine when connected to iMac FW.
HW Specs:
Drive: G-Drive Mobile USB/FW 750GB

Exchanged drive. Works now.

Finder can't see external hard drive

All of a sudden, my PowerBook G4 can no longer see my external hard drive (Maxtor 160 GB drive). The drive doesn't appear in the Finder, and it doesn't mount on the desktop. Thus, I have no way of accessing the files on my external hard drive.
I can see the external hard drive when I launch Disk Utility (and also when I launch TechTool Pro), so I know the hard drive and the USB connections are working.
Can someone please help on this?? I've tried unplugging everything and rebooting with no results. Thank you.
PowerBook G4 Titanium 1ghz processor Mac OS X (10.4.2)

By the way, here are my test results from running Disk Utility and Tech Tool Pro. Everything looks clean, I think?
Disk Utility says:
"The volume External Hard Drive appears to be OK.
Mounting Disk.
1 HFS volume checked.
No repairs were necessary."
TechTool Pro volumes test says:
Volume Structures
Thursday, March 29, 2007 6:24:26 PM US/Pacific
Passed
Volume: External Hard Drive
Mount Point: /dev/disk1s3
Format: HFS+ (Mac OS Extended)
Journaling: Enabled
Case-sensitive: No
Created: 03/26/07 01:26:09 AM
Modified: 03/26/07 01:26:09 AM
Capacity: 152.54 GB
Used: 49.81 GB
Available: 102.74 GB
Files: 86,074
Folders: 16,342
Writable: Yes
Ejectable: No
Removable: No
There are a variety of invisible files, settings, and parameters that the Macintosh file system uses to locate files, free disk space, and for other maintenance and management routines. Damage to these critical data structures can result in lost or damaged files and may even necessitate a complete reformat of the volume.
Precheck Structures
This test checks the readability of the various volume structures.
Boot Blocks
This test validates the Boot Blocks portion of the volume. This block of data is created when the volume is blessed.
Boot Blocks <Passed>
Master Directory Block
This test validates the Master Directory Block portion of the volume. This block of data is created when the volume is created and contains important data about the rest of the volume.
Master Directory Block <Passed>
Volume Header
This test validates the Volume Header portion of the volume. This block of data is created when the volume is created and contains important data about the rest of the volume like number of files and folders, and the amount of free space available on the volume.
Volume Header <Passed>
Allocation File (Bitmap)
This test checks the Allocation file. This file indicates which blocks are allocated for use and which blocks are free.
Allocation File (Bitmap) <Passed>
Extents File (B-Tree)
This test checks the Extents file. This file contains the extent data for the entire volume. Extents are the separate components of a fragmented file.
Extents File (B-Tree) <Passed>
Catalog File (B-Tree)
This test checks the Catalog file. This file keeps track of all the files and folders on the volume.
Catalog File (B-Tree) <Passed>
Attributes File
This test checks the Attributes file. This file tracks all of the attributes of each file and folder on a volume. Some attributes include whether the file is locked or not and the last time the volume was backed up.
Attributes File <Passed>
Startup File
This test checks the Startup file. The parameters within this file contain the information used by the computer ROM to determine what program will boot the computer as well as other system-specific aspects.
Startup File <Not Present>
Completed
Passed
Tech Tool Pro File structure says:
File Structure
Thursday, March 29, 2007 6:30:25 PM US/Pacific
Passed
Volume: External Hard Drive
Mount Point: /dev/disk1s3
Format: HFS+ (Mac OS Extended)
Journaling: Enabled
Case-sensitive: No
Created: 03/26/07 01:26:09 AM
Modified: 03/26/07 01:26:09 AM
Capacity: 152.54 GB
Used: 49.81 GB
Available: 102.74 GB
Files: 86,074
Folders: 16,342
Writable: Yes
Ejectable: No
Removable: No
This test checks for file resource corruption on the volume 'External Hard Drive'. If any damaged files are found, TechTool Pro will let you know which files have corrupted resources.
Analyzing File Structures
Passed
I'll let you know if Tech Tool Pro's surface scan of the drive turns anything up (it's running right now - takes several hours to run), but hopefulyl this provides a good starting point into painting a picture of my system...
Thx - Bob

Can't see external drive after Leopard installation

Hi there, i hope i'm i the right place! I have just installed Leopard on my Intel iMac 1.83ghz, 2gb ram, 160gb HD and it no longer sees my external Maxtor One Tough 3 HD. Disk utility says it doesn't recognise it. I have checked the Seagate site for a Leopard update for Intel Macs but nothing yet.
Any ideas anybody?
Cheers
Lou

also at:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=5717128#5717128
Apparently turning off the password security on the drive from a 10.4 machine has fixed it for at least some people w/this symptom.

Can't See External Hard Drive

I have just bought a Pleiades USB/LAN External Storage Enclosure and put a G2-lan Seagate 200gb hard drive in it. I’ve connected it through via USB and network cable (not at the same time) and I’m pulling my hair out cos I have no freakin idea how it works.
The network cable seamed to complicated by my pathetic excuse for a brain so I’m trying to connect it via USB and even that simple task seams too much for me. My manual says “Turn your computer on and start Mac OS X, connect the Pleiades and turn it on, no river installation is required, the external drive will mount and show up on your desktop”. Pitty it didn’t. I noted the footnote “For factory new drivers and formatting, see “Partitioning and Formatting” So I go there: “Select “Disk Utility” in the utilities folder. Chose your external drive and create a FAT32 partition”. Would be good, if my external drive showed up in the list. Then there is a side note that says “If you can not see the drive, make sure the settings of your hard drive are correct, there are no extension conflicts and the power is turned on”. The power is turned on, but I have no idea how to see the settings on the hard drive let alone know what they should be.
And that’s my conundrum. Help please.

Hello! A couple of things. First pull the drive and check the jumpers to see if it's jumpered as "master". The cable select position won't work on an ext case. Was the drive new or pulled from another computer? It could be set to the "slave" jumper and again would need to be changed to "master". The jumper settings are usually noted on the drive but you might have to go the the Manf. site to find them. Once your sure the drive is set to master plug the usb connector in and turn it on and see if it either pops up on the desktop or gives you the "do you want to initialize" window. Post back with your results. Tom

Can't see external hard drive in 10.3.9

My friend has a MacBook G3, using OS 10.3.9. I tried to give her an external hard drive, a Western Digital pocket drive (runs on USB power). But, the drive won't mount on her desktop, and we can't even see it using Disk Utility on her computer. The drive's powerlight is ON after we plug it into the USB port, but we just can't see the drive, not even to format it.
It works fine on my MacBook running OS 10.5.6, and I reformated it several times, with several different format options, on my MacBook. But no matter what we do, the drive is not visible on the G3, even though it is getting power from the G3 USB port.
Any suggestions?

Look at these links.
USB and FireWire Quick Assist
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1151?viewlocale=en_US
Common fixes for USB device issues (unrecognized, etc.)
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20070824012114701
Try the above fixes first. It's possible that there's not enough power in the USB port to spin up the HD. Although usually you will get an error notification. You could get an AC powered USB hub to connect to the PB & then to the HD if this is the situation.
 Cheers, Tom

Finder is not recognizing external drive

Yesterday, (Mar 28,2012) Finder was listing my external drive but when I went to eject the drive, it no longer showed in Finder. I cannot eject the drive properly. It is showing on my Desktop. I've done a disk utility verfy disk and it is recognized and no problem was found. I tried a new USB cable and the old Fire Wire (which doesn't work??). I used a different USB port but nothing seems to work. I've also tried restarting. I am running a MacBook Pro with 10.6.8. Any ideas??
Thanks for the help.

Just a thought, if your external hdd shows up on the desktop and disk utility I would start simple and check Finder preferences. Once Finder preferences is open click on the tab sidebar and see if External Disks is checked under Devices. Also, you can properly eject the external hdd icon that shows up on the desktop by dragging and dropping it to the trashcan.
If this didn't work, and what necronym didn't work, I would suggest deleting this file found at /library/preferences/com.apple.finder.plist , then restart the computer. Then test the external hdd with Finder again.

Finder can't see external drive

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