HD Icon (system disk) Disappeared

The Main HD icon on which the system disk is on has disappeared from the desktop. Just disappeared.
I ran disk utility to verify the disk and it did need repair, so booted from edrive(techtool) and ran apples disk utility program to repair the disk which it did, then i ran it a few more times to double check and then restarted from system disk again.
Still no Macintosh HD icon.
ran repair disk and repair disk permissions again both OK
Tried an installer and the system HD is there and all cool.
Tried Finder-Go-Computer . all the other drives but no System (internal) HD icon
Tried dragging the icon from disk utility that doesnt work.
I can access all apllications and documents as normal but cant click on the HD ?

Hi. Well - if the HD icon is not appearing in Finder > Go > Computer, then Finder > Preferences > General > Check Show Hard Disks is probably not going to work - but may be worth a quick try.
There are some possible solutions in this thread
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=294158&tstart=0
Good Luck.

Similar Messages

My system disk icon has a question mark in it and does not open now

my system disk icon has a question mark in it and does not open now
and my devices name is gone when i click on FINDER, my favourites is there with the following listed under it-
ALL MY FILES
AIRDROP
APPLICATIONS
DESKTOP
DOCUMENTS and under documents was the DEVICES word with my Macintosh under it, this is missing... what have i done

Somehow you've managed to delete it.
To re-install iPhoto
1. Put the iPhoto.app in the trash (Drag it from your Applications Folder to the trash)
2. Download it from the App Store to reinstall It's on your Purchases List* there.
For older versions that have been installed from Disk you'll need these additional steps:
2a: On 10.5: Go to HD/Library/Receipts and remove any pkg file there with iPhoto in the name.
2b: On 10.6: Those receipts may be found as follows: In the Finder use the Go menu and select Go To Folder. In the resulting window type
/var/db/receipts/
2c: on 10.7 or later they're at
/private/var/db/receipts
A Finder Window will open at that location and you can remove the iPhoto pkg files.
3. Re-install.
If you purchased an iLife Disk, then iPhoto is on it.
If iPhoto was installed on your Mac when you go it then it’s on the System Restore disks that came with your Mac. Insert the first one and opt to ‘Install Bundled Applications Only.
*Sometimes iPhoto is not visible on the Purchases List. it may be hidden. See this article for details on how to unhide it.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4928
One question often asked: Will I lose my Photos if I reinstall?
iPhoto the application and the iPhoto Library are two different parts of the iPhoto programme. So, reinstalling the app should not affect the Library. BUT you should always have a back up before doing this kind of work. Always.

Startup disk disappear from the desktop

Well, without any reason, The startup disk is disappear from the desktop.
(Just only the startup disk)
I found this 2 times before, once on my 8 cores Mac Pro, once on my iMac G5.
I couldn't do anything to fix them, so I formatted and re-install OS.
with my iMac, it ran Tiger before, there's no problem until I changed to Leopard,
After about 2 weeks under the new Leopard,then the startup disk disappear from the desktop,
it shown the hidden status in disk utility and could not mount it,
So I formatted and back to install old Tiger.
Everything's fine. that's really good Operating system.
Bad luck, about 2 months ago, My iMac G5 had some problem with motherboard and the harddisk also damaged, I send it to Apple Thailand, They fixed it and send back with installed Leopard inside my new hard disk.(well... again)
Now after a few weeks. it happen again.
Startup disk disappear from the desktop.
This problem never exist on my Mac Pro, just with the iMac G5.
(Please don't tell me to check the finder preference about the sidebar setting.
it's already set to show every items there even the iDisk)
I wondered why I don't see anyone have problem with this.
I'm really want to find the answer about this.
I asked this question to Apple Thailand's support team but they didn't have any idea.
Who's gonna answer this

I found a solution to the problem and posted it here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1858340&stqc=true
I pasted the solution below:
from a Terminal window, type:
ls -lOd /
(That's lowercase ell, lowercase ess, space, minus, lowercase ell, capital oh, lowercase dee, space, forward slash)
You should get something like this:
hostname:~ username$ ls -lOd /
drwxrwxr-t 32 root admin - 1156 Feb 8 20:35 /
Sounds like you might see something like this instead:
hostname:~ username$ ls -lOd /
drwxrwxr-t@ 32 root admin hidden 1156 Feb 8 20:35 /
(note it says "hidden" instead of "-")
To fix this, type:
sudo chflags nohidden /
and provide your admin password. You won't get any output back from the command but the icon should now appear on your desktop, and the hidden flag should go away if you repeat the 'ls -lOd /' command.
And just in case you missed it above, you've got to be sure Hard disks are turned on in Finder General Preferences under "Show these items on the Desktop"

Disks disappeared from Desktop after 10.5.4 - 10.5.8v1.1 update

Hi,
a strange think happend today after a server update from 10.5.4 to 10.5.8v1.1 with a downloaded combo installer: After the reboot 3 of 5 1 TB firewire disks disappeared from the desktop! Just gone. What makes the whole thing really tricky: they show up in the disk utilities as mounted! Repairing them doesn´t change a thing. Disk Warrior doesn´t help. What´s even more mysterious: Opening the terminal, cd to the /Volumes folder ls shows folders for all five disks. But "ls -l" produces an "Access denied" error for each of the missing disks! It requires a sudo to show the permissions of the disks! What´s more disturbing: The permissions of the disks not showing up are ending with an "+" while all the other disks have an "@". But what really knocks me of that you can mount and work with the missing disks over the network! I really need help with that.
Greetings,
Mike

Hello mibobby,
I'm seeing something similar to the problem you reported here. I my case there are 4 external hard drives connected to the Xserve 10.5.8. All drives are visible from Disk Utility, The Finder, and terminal. However, if a drive is plugged into another system, 10.5.8, or 10.6.2, the drives will not mount in the Finder. They appear in Disk Utility, but the volume appears as a blank piece of paper rather than a hard drive icon. If you navigate to the volume vial the terminal, you get an error indicating that you do not have permissions. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Did you ever get your problem resolved?
Thanks
Dean

No system disk appears on the desktop. Help please.

No system disk appears on the desktop.
Here all external drives.
I rebootedholding the shift key.
I have checked the Finder / Preferences / General is selected to show the hard drives, also in Finder / Preferences / Sidebar is selected.
I have opened the Disk Utility application and if you see the system disk, I have told you to check and tells me that the disk has no problems.
Otherwise the iMac works perfectly, but Safari, which is all I have used since the problem besides Disk Utility sometimes gets stuck, and has trouble reconnecting.
Help, please.
Greetings from Valencia, Spain

Hello Jan:
Thanks for the reply.
I do not know how important it is, well, I've always been there and now I do not know because it is not, simply so I have direct access to everything on my iMac.
Suddenly disappeared, which means that something is wrong with the computer.
No, the sidebar does not appear.
Thanks for the reply. Greetings from Valencia, Spain

Have to use System disks to open Hard drive

Hello,
I installed a system on my external hard drive in efforts to solve a mail problem that is now resolved. Now, when I restart the computer, I get a grey screen with some code, some words and an unknown icon on it.
The only way I can restore my regular hard drive is to use the 10.4.8 system disk and hold down the 'C' key when I restart [which is noted on the disk].
How do I get back to my main hard drive back at startup without starting from scratch. Of course, I am on deadline.
Thanks for your help. V

Hi Valerie,
first of all: WELCOME TO THE DISCUSSIONS!
Reboot and hold down the Option-key during boot. This will bring you into the startup manager where you can select from all available systems.
If this answered your question please consider granting some stars: Why reward points?

Getting data from old system disks

My Mac Mini was blown up by a lightning strike. Blew the Ethernet port.
I have a new machine and the drives from the old one. Borrowed a cradle from a friend. The drives mount.
I can see and copy files from folders I made on the drives but the User areas appear to have no files.
There were Images in iPhoto and documents in iBooks.
I am guessing it is a permissions thing...
How can I get my files of off the old system disk?
Thanks
SGC

I doubt this is a permission issue, but if it is, you can resolve it as follows. Select the volume icon in the Finder and open the Info window. Click the padlock icon in the lower right corner of the window and enter your administrator password when prompted. Check the box at the bottom marked
Ignore ownership on this volume
Close the Info window.

PB G3 Pismo-Stalls, Hard Disk Disappears

[NOTE - This message originally posted in Older Hardware discussion group. One response appears at end of original message.]
PB G3 firewire (Pismo)
OS 10.4.2
Fastmac G4 550 processor
576 mb RAM
Western Digital 60 MB HD (replacing Toshiba 40 mb HD that I thought was problem)
DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEM
The computer starts and works fine for a while until, without any discernible trigger (except maybe physically moving the PB), the PB stalls (twirling rainbow colored disk). Sometimes it first stalls in one application (so I can switch to other apps or the finder using the Command-Tab keys), but eventually it stalls in all apps. Force Quit option (keyboard or menu-activated) does not function. The only option is to shut down and restart. Sometimes it restarts, other times just a flashing question mark in the floppy disk icon.
If I happen to be in Word when the stall occurs (or is about to occur), I first get a dialague box telling me Word can't read from or write to the open file, saying there must be a bad network or floppy disk connection. I can usually quit Word when that dialogue appears, but restarting Word does nothing to fix the problem. Instead, I have to restart the PB.
With the flashing "?," I can hear the HD trying to start spinning again and again, but nothing happens. As noted below, starting with Diskwarrior has at least once resulted in Diskwarrior not being able to find the HD.
ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS
Run the latest version of Diskwarrior. Does not solve the problem. Sometimes, Diskwarrior cannot even find the hard disk.
Replace the HD - did that switching the Toshiba for the Western Digital drive. The Toshiba works fine in a Firewire HD case. The problem can't be HD.
Reinstall OS X and applications - done multiple times, both archive and clean installs.
Make sure RAM is properly seated.
Reset PRAM.
WHAT'S WRONG?
I think the problem is hardware related (other than HD).
Any suggestions for what to look at and in what order? For example: G4 processor bad; RAM bad (but symptoms don't seem consistent with that); power/charge card bad; something with the heat sink; something with the cable that attaches to the HD.
Is there a way of checking these short of replacing them one by one?
Appreciate any help I can get.
Ken
On 12:04pm Sep 15, 2005 CDT, jpl wrote:
Subject: RE: PB G3 Pismo-Stalls, Hard Disk Disappears
Ken,
Welcome to the discussions!
A very good description of the problem! You obviously have covered a lot of territory troubleshooting this issue and it certainly appears to be a hardware-related.
I think you have fairly well isolated the problem as I see it:
- stall (spinning beach ball) that eventually occurs in all apps;
- a restart that produces the flashing '?';
- DiskWarrior's occasional failure to find the HD.
I would suggest you have a bad HD ribbon cable or a bad HD IDE bridge on the logic board (or some other issue on the logic board) that develops with heat.
Since you have a FireWire HD with a known-good HD, why don't you use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable clone of your internal HD on the FW HD, then boot to the FW HD and run from it and see if the same issue develops.
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
On 12:41pm Sep 15, 2005 CDT, Ken H wrote:
Subject: RE: PB G3 Pismo-Stalls, Hard Disk Disappears
Thanks for the quick response. I will try what you suggested.
I also was thinking that this may be a heat-related problem, and wonder if maybe I did not put enough - or too much - heat sink compound between the heat exchanger and the processor board. Could it be that simple?
One item I omitted from my original post: before I replaced the Toshiba HD, I noted, when I turned the sleeping PB on its end to carry in my laptop bag), the PB would almost always be stalled when I woke it from sleep, requiring a restart (and too often a directory rebuild using Diskwarrior or an archive

Rebuilt the directory using Diskwarrior, but on the last step received the following error message:
A disk malfunction occurred while writing the replacement directory to the disk. Rebuild this disk again."
Also, this rebuild showed a large number of repairs. When I ran Diskwarrior this morning, it showed there would be no changes to the directory. I've barely used the PB since this morning's rebuild.

M30X-124: Power Saver image in the system tray disappeares.

Hi,
I own a Satellite M30X-124 with Windows XP SP2. When installing Toshiba Power Saver everything works just until suddently the image in the system tray disappeares. I then have to reinstall the Toshiba Power Saver (TPS) for everything to work as intended.
By now, I have approx. reinstalled TPS 5 times. Does anyone know a solution or at least the problem?
Greetz,
Micha

Hello
Well, I think its not a Power Saver malfunction. I assume that the option Hide inactive icons in the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties is marked.
Move the mouse pointer to the Taskbar then right click. There you should see the Taskbar properties. There you can disable the option Hide inactive icons.
Bye

Time Machine disk usage vs System disk usage

Hi
How is it possible that the disk usage on TimeMachine is higher than the one on the system disk?
Here is output of df:
$ df -h
Filesystem      Size   Used Avail Capacity   iused    ifree %iused Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2   931Gi 709Gi 221Gi    77% 186031324 57949418   76%   /
/dev/disk1s2   931Gi 629Gi 302Gi    68% 164958812 79139480   68%   /Volumes/My Passport
Since AFAIK Time Machine does not compress the backups, I'm afraid that some of the data is not
backed up. The My Passport volume holds backups since a few months ago.
How is this possible? Any hint would be apreciated.
Thanks,
Nikola

In the sidebar of a Finder window, select the icon representing your startup volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name.) At the top level of the volume are folders with these names, among others:
Applications
Library
System
Enter Time Machine and select the most recent snapshot, which is behind the frontmost window. Are those folders present in the snapshot?

HT203176 Unable to boot from System disk to access Disk Utility

Hello
I need want to run Disk utilities on my mac. Have done this before using system disk and holding C etc.
Since upgrading to Snow Leopard from Leopard it no longer sees my system disk.
Restart holding down C with system disk installed...and mac just boots-up normally!
Can anyone suggest what the problem is?
NB: Ultimately I want to run the disk utility to check that the Hard Drive is healthy after install.

Hi chaps
You get the picture....holding down the C key expecting to see the install software option and all I was getting was my desktop. I tried the option key and no joy there either. I was beginning to think it was the two Mac superdrives installed in my mac which are a nightmare. They only seem to be able to read mac disks!!! all a bit incestuous. I found out via the forums that the Sony DVD RW DW-D150A have taken up a lot of airtime. Still pondering what I can do about them...they were fine and the 2nd drive has never really been used. Apparently they are a rebadged NEC burner but they suddenly decided to get choosey about what disks to read....anyway sorry I am losing focus.
Stuck the Snow Leopard disk and instead of restarting or holding C I just clicked on the desktop icon and pressed the install 10.6 button. It huffed and puffed and chugged away turning my screen blue and then grey and finally coming up with a box with two options...install 10.6 or Utilities. Pressed utilities and I was in familiar ground...Disk First Aid!!!! Ran the verifications and repair buttons and a few fixes and job done....a healthy report on the state of my HD.
To be fair the small booklet does say... to install Snow Leopard insert your installation disc and double-click install Mac OSX. I guess I am so used to using previous versions of the OS and pressing C etc hat I did not realise I could access the utilities/First Aid the same way. Took the best part of my day to do this and if they had put in a 3rd paragraph in the booklet to say access Utilites/First Aid the same way my life would have been a whole lot easier.
Now scared to upgrade to Lion as I really am not enjoying the mac experience at the moment....too much depends on my mac and software working without having to worry about technicalities or IT. It’s just not my bag. Thanks guys for the suggestions and your time. I am interested on your opinions with regards to the two superdrives! I have stuff on old DVDs and it just doesn’t see them but it used to...why? My fault for buying two of the buggers I suppose.
Regards
Simon (Mac fan)

Local disk disappeared after factory recovery running

Hi! I was trying to run Factory Recovery utility on my W510, and after getting a message that no more than one copy of recovery set can be created (which is true - i already created one set a while ago), one of my local disks "disappeared". I still can see my System disk (C, but can't see or open my local disk (D. Did anyone had such problem before? Thank you!
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Check under Disk Management. Does the other partition still exist?
W520: i7-2720QM, Q2000M at 1080/688/1376, 21GB RAM, 500GB + 750GB HDD, FHD screen
X61T: L7500, 3GB RAM, 500GB HDD, XGA screen, Ultrabase
Y3P: 5Y70, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, QHD+ screen

Account icon systems preference

The 'Account' icon in the Systems Preference disappeared. Without that I can't manage my user accounts and implement parental control. How can I recover that? My iMac was bought end last year so the software version is new enough.
Thanks in advance.

Greetings,
I'm not sure what you mean by "the software version is new enough". New enough for what?
The current version of the Mac OS is 10.6.7, make sure you are up to date.
Check to see if the Accounts Pref Pane is still installed:
Macintosh HD > System > Library > PreferencesPane > Accounts
If the Accounts.prefPane is present simply double-click on it to launch / reinstall it.
If the Accounts.prefPane is not present, try searching for it by name using File > Find "Accounts.prefPane"
If you cannot locate and restore the PrefPane then you'll need to reinstall the Mac OS: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/8177.html
Hope that helps.

Virtual Disk disappeared

Hi there,
I have a storage pool containing 3x2TB physcial disks: one WD and two Seagate. Pool have 2 virtual disks: Data (mirrored) and Temp (Simple). After some time Temp drive disappeared from the list and I lost all data on it. Not big deal but I want to
recreate storage pool as saw somewhere that data structure or something has changed since first release of Storage Spaces (I'm using them from first official beta of Windows Server 2012).
So as I'm lost my Temp drive, I decided to do following:
1) Delete WD disk from storage pool, so data will remain on 2xSeagate (I have about 1,5 TB of data)
2) Reformat WD as single drive and copy everything to it
3) Delete old storage pool
4) Create new one
5) Create mirrored virtual disk
6) Copy data back from WD to that virtual disk
But I'm stuck on removal WD from storage pool, as Server manager says me that there is not enough space in storage pool and I should first connect spare disk.
Looks like my Temp drive disappeared, but space not has been purged. So is there any way to get my Temp dirve back or manually run cleanup?
MCSE, MCITP, CCNA Security Subscribe to my blog at http://sypalo.com

Hi,
Sorry for my mistake, I mean that the data on the mirror virtual disk is striped across the three physical disks. As you mentioned the allocated space is less than a physical disk, you want to know if there is a way to shrink the virtual disk to let the allocated
space size is larger than the size of one physical disk.
You could use Optimize-Volume command line to optimize a volume, performing such tasks on supported volumes and system SKUs as defragmentation, trim, slab consolidation,
and storage tier processing. Then use Resize-VirtualDisk
command line to resizes the virtual disk to be smaller.
But if the allocated space is still less than a physical disk, you should attach a new spare disk when delete a physical disk.
In the meantime, if the virtual disk have a lot of duplication data, you can also enable data deduplication to get more allocated space in virtual disk.
For more detailed information, please refer to the articles below:
Step-by-Step: Enabling Data Deduplication on Windows Server 2012 Volumes
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/441858d0-0a17-4126-a594-ba1c6483c59b/virtual-disk-disappeared?forum=winserverfiles
Introduction to Data Deduplication in Windows Server 2012
http://blogs.technet.com/b/filecab/archive/2012/05/21/introduction-to-data-deduplication-in-windows-server-2012.aspx
Regards,
We
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Thanks for helping make community forums a great place.

Did the iMac 24" come with System disks

Folks - I bought an open box 24" iMac from Best Buy about a year ago. My hard drive has now lost about 60 GB of space while I was doing some Lightroom updating...bringing over a few months of photos.
Running OnyX verification it says I need to repair my internal disk. I can't find the original system disk and I don't remember there being any in the box. I have the box...so I'm wondering if it ever had any disks?
My computer is a 24" 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo on Version 10.4.11.
If I had a CD/DVD system I'd boot from it and repair the internal disk...I guess after backing up my stuff!
Thanks for the input...Dan
PS - I've used WhatSize to confirm about 60GB are just gone!
Any links to where I can create a minimum system disk with disk utility to run the repair would be great...other than this disappearing hard drive space everything has been running fine.

Absolutely Digital wrote:
is there any sites that have just a minimum system disk one can download to run
the disk utility repair?
Not that I am aware of because the system takes up most of a dvd so it would be too large to download and most any third party Utilities cost money so you would have to purchase the software disks anyway.
Likewise, can I copy my existing system disk to an external drive and boot from
that one?
Yes you can do that. Many of us techies keep a bootable backup for this type of situation. You could also purchase yourself a copy of Disk Warrior and use that to Repair your Volume directory because sometimes even when you boot to another drive and run Repair disk it may or may not be able to repair the directory. Disk Warrior does a better job at Repairing Volume damage.
George

HD Icon (system disk) Disappeared

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