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.

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Robin Ryan wrote:
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keeler1 wrote:
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Finder is not recognizing external drive

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