Have an external hard drive, with files on it, no longer showing on desktop

I've had an external hard drive for a few months now, and about 3 weeks ago, it stopped showing up on the desktop and when i search for it, nothing shows up. All of the cords are still connected.
Is there a way to fix this so i don't destroy the files that are on there?

Did you try to see if the drive would show up in "Disk Utility"?
First unplug any other firewire/usb devices (except your mouse and keyboard). Sometimes my external firewire drive gives me some issues when my iSight camera is connected. Normally no issues, but once in while they don't like each other and I have to unplug them and plug them back in (sometimes a reboot too).
Unplug and re-plug the external drive connection into your Mac and turn the external drive on. Then go to your Applications folder --> Utilities folder --> open Disk Utility. If the external drive shows up...highlight the drive and click on Repair Permissions. If the drive still does not mount, try swapping out the firewire or USB cable to the external drive with a known good working cable and try rebooting you Mac with your drive plugged in and powered on. Try repairing permissions with Disk Utility again. If you know the cable is good and the drive still will not mount, try connecting it to another Mac.
If your drive is now showing up in Disk Utility and in your Finder, you may have just changed a view setting for the showing or not showing of mounted media on the desktop.
Remember back your computer and backup your external drive if there is any data that is not duplicated or stored elsewhere. I hear of a lot people just storing data on their external and only have one physical copy of a file(s). Never. Always have at least 2 copies of your data on at least 2 different drives, DVD, CD, etc. You just never know when a drive will stop. A great drive cloning app is SuperDuper, google it.
Let us know if you are still having issues. If yes, please give more details...drive brand, firewire or usb, iMac model and OS version.

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will I have to reformat that drive, thus wiping my previous back ups?
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as I have two separate Macbook Pro's- one older than the other.
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Are you running a Managed or a Referenced Library?
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1. Quit iPhoto
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3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
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Regards
TD

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in my Usage it says i have over 40 gb of movies when i only have about 9gb which i can see using spotlight search. i really hope the other amount is my missing videos! these are videos of my kids as babies.

Read this post and do the migration again, putting the library in a portable shape first if necessary.
tt2

Have an external hard drive, with files on it, no longer showing on desktop

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