I cannot get my hard drive to mount on desktop

Today I had to erase my internal (start-up) hard drive and reinstall Mountain Line (ML) and although the reinstall seems to have occurred correctly - the iMac will now start up and run properly - the icon for the internal hard drive does not appear on the desktop along with the other disk icons.  When I hold the option key down during start-up the Hard Drive icon shows up among the other drives attached to my Mac - but the icon or image of the internal hard drive does not appear on the desktop.  I tried to use Disk Utility to mount the disk, but even though the disk is listed and shown in the left most column of the Disk Utility window - the drive will not mount on the desktop
I seem to remember that the same thing happened when I originally installed Mountain Line on this machine - and after poking around in countless menus I found an option that when selected caused the internal hard drive to mount on the desktop just fine.  But I've not been able to find that option thus far with the newest version of ML.  And a search of the "Help" system was useless.
Can anyone shed some light on the resolution of this problem?
Thanks

Finder - Preferences - General - click the boxes you want for "Show these items on the Desktop"

Similar Messages

  • Problem getting hard drives to mount on desktop and also open when they do

    I have a problem getting the iMac to recognise external hard drives - it won't show them on either firewire 400 or 800. I can see my 1TB drive using usb ( it shows up on the desktop, whereas on firewire it doesn't do this) but if I try to open it and see the contents in finder, it opens, but doesn't display the contents of the drive. I can see the disk size but just get a grey spinning wheel in the bottom right hand of the finder window. Timemachine does not work with this drive. it used to but then stopped. It sees the drive but cannot back up to it.

    What brand drive is it? Check to see how the drive has been formatted. From the desktop right click/Get Info.
    If your iMac is having Firewire issues try resetting the SMC: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1543?viewlocale=en_US
    Open up Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility select the external drive on the left hand side and under the First Aid tab click Repair Disk.
    If the drive is formatted for Windows NTFS+ or FAT32 then you will need to erase the drive and reformat it for Mac OS Extended. Make sure to backup any data before reformatting.
    George

  • Hard drive not mounting to desktop/computer

    I am setting up my AirPort Extreme 802.11 with an attached 300GB LaCie Brick hard drive with iTunes library. I can see that the Brick is recognized in the AirPort Utility > disks page, but it will not load onto my computer and I can not access it. I have the utility set to auto mount disks and have even tried to manually mount the disc, but it will not appear on the desktop. Am I missing something?
    PowerBook G4   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

    Hello,
    I've got the same situation pretty much exactly.
    I am using a Lacie porsche 250g USB disk.
    Airport Disk Utility doesn't see the volume.
    Airport Utility sees it just fine, but it is not showing on the desktop as it was in the past.
    The AEBS was working, and the disk was being mounted properly until I began trying different configurations to allow my networked PC to also see the volume.
    It seems to have started after I had set up the AEBS to assign access to the disk using accounts. I set up a couple accounts, just to see how they worked, and restarted the AEBS, but the volume did not appear. I set it back to the initial setting requiring password for disk access, and I've not managed to get it working properly again.
    Any help at all would be fantastic.

  • External Hard Drive not mounting on Desktop

    Hello,
    I use a 250 gb Lacie external hard drive (firewire) for backup. For the past week, the external hard drive has mostly not been mounting on the desktop.
    I don't think it's a power issue, because after turning the unit on both the light indicating power turns on and I can hear the motor operating.
    As indicated on the Lacie web site, I went to disk utility in system preferences and repaired disk permissions for my Mac's hard drive volume. That doesn't seem to have made a difference.
    Does anyone have any other suggestions as to what I should do?
    Thank you,
    Manny

    Hi gavvx, and a warm welcome to the forums!
    Feel free to start a new topic of your own will get more individualized attention, and many more helpers!
    It can be hard to sometimes find where to start a New Topic, so here's the link...
    http://discussions.apple.com/post!default.jspa?forumID=758
    Did you try highlighting them, then the Mount button in Disk Utility?

  • External hard drive not mounting on desktop or being accessible - help!!!

    Hello,
    I use an Iomega 160GB external hardrive to store my iTunes and a load of video files as well as back up to but at the moment I can't get it to mount. It is visible in system profiler but I can't access any of the files. I tried verifying it and repairing it in disk utility but both of these failed. If any of you could help me out I would really appreciate it - I do have another copy of all my files on my iMac at home but i am currently studying in Spain and won't be going back till Christmas so need to get this drive up and running!

    welcome to macbook forum.
    try to reset PRAM to refresh your macbook port.
    check the power adapter, if it comes with it, use it or check if the power adapter still good and supplied the power properly.
    connect your external to other mac (you can connect to PC if it formatted as FAT32), if it succedd, back up your data and repair / reformat using that other mac.
    Good Luck.

  • Hard Drive Not Mounting After Being Magically Changed to Read Only

    I was using a firewire connected, verbatim 1tb drive as a time machine. Everything had been working fine, but I walked away from my laptop for the morning and came back this afternoon to find my hard drive changed to read only. Time machine wouldn't back up to the hard drive; so, I rebooted.
    Since then, I haven't been able to get the hard drive to mount. It won't show up in Drive Utility or on the desktop. I have rebooted the hard drive, unplugged it, turned it on and off.
    What should I do? How do I fix this? It has my backups and my music. I'm no amused.

    I've had exactly the same trouble this morning.
    I'm using a MacBook Pro with my Time Machine on a portable Hard Drive. When doing my regular back up the computer froze. I force restarted the computer and the TM drive came up as 'Read Only'.
    So, I rebooted again and the drive is not mounting at all. I can see it connected through System Profiler, however the drive isn't showing up in Disk Utility.
    Does anyone have any ideas? Coz I don't seem to be the only one with this issue.

  • This morning my PB G4 would not get to the password screen after power on.  I have rebooted many times and very loud noises (like a HD spinning/rubbing) emits. Tried the Install disk and it cannot find the hard drive. Ran HW test and got a "Mass storage E

    this morning my PB G4 would not get to the password screen after power on.  I have rebooted many times and very loud noises (like a HD spinning/rubbing) emits. Tried the Install disk and it cannot find the hard drive. Ran HW test and got a "Mass storage Error Code" message.
    Did my HD just crash and unrecoverable?  Time to replace my notebook?

    I believe your hard drive has failed. Hope you have a backup.
    Failing Hard Drive Sounds http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php
    Listed by drive manufacturer.  Click on the > next to the drive & you will hear the typical failure sound.
    How to Tell When Your Hard Drive is Going to Fail
    http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/how-to-tell-when-your-hard-drive-is- going-to-fail.html
    Grinding And Clicking – Symptoms Of A Failing Hard Drive
    http://pcperformancetools.com/getdata/grinding-and-clicking-symptoms-of-failing- hard-drive.html
    Failing Hard Drives
    http://losangelescomputerhelp.com/computer_networking_news/failing-hard-drives.h tml
     Cheers, Tom

  • Tiger randomly stopped allowing my External Hard drive to mount and...

    Hello, I have been using an External Hard Drive (1 terabyte Seagate, new) for a couple months if not a year by now for saving movies, and all of my iTunes on it. Its been working wonderfully. However it recently stopped being able to mount citing invalid hard drive and gives me the options of either eject, ignore, or initialize. Im not sure what to do. And also my computer has been acting funny every since the day it started. I will walk you through it step by step.
    July 6th I was surfing the web and unfortunetly clicked on a link that aparently contained a trojan. Or atleast thats what my Antivirus notified me of. I had downloaded the trojan some how without a pop up or anything telling me I was downloading anything. (using safari) So i ran a virus scan and saw one virus was in my system and that it couldnt be deleted or repaired by my antivirus program, Im working on getting rid of that but at the time I had my Seagate 1 terabyte external hard drive attached via fire wire to my Macbook. It was working then.
    Later that day I unplugged my hard drive and took my laptop around a little bit, nothing unusual. Then when i came back later that night I tried plugging in my hard drive and a pop up stated that the hard drive was unable to mount and I could either eject, ignore, or initilize. I tried may different routes, restarting, letting it all rest, etc. And in Disk Utility i try to verify the disc and it says its unable to and needs repairs. So I try repairing the disc and it says unable to due to an error.
    Then yesterday I went to my applications and noticed none of my applications are there anymore. These applications were saved on the internal hard drive so it was very odd to me. However i can still use spotlight to find and open my apps.
    My question is, What can I do to allow my external hard drive to mount? I dont figure it is the trojan on my system but could it be? If so how would I fix it? Im mostly worried about getting the data off the external hard drive then I can reformat it. Or if theres a way to just get it back to normal without reformatting Id love to hear it. As for the applications missing and the trojan on my internal hard drive I can fix that, at the very least Ill just reboot my system with my original OS Disc and just start fresh, its about time anyways.
    But please. If anyone has ever had their external hard drive just stop mounting and figured out what to do I would be ever so grateful to hear how you did so. The hard drive itself isnt damaged, its not making any unusual sounds. Whenever i plug it into the computer it acts like normal (turning on and what not) until the computer tells me it cannot mount then nothing happens. Ive looked online and it seems to be a software issue.
    If its any help I was downloading a torrent (.avi, no viruses) at the time. I know sometimes if one file on the hard drive becomes corrupt the whole thing becomes unusable. Regardless I would appreciate it if anyone knows a way to at the very least retreive the files on the drive, but preferably know how to just get it back to normal. If i could get it to force mount (via terminal or something) I know which file would possibly be the corrupt one or something so I could work with it.

    Bejan:
    Thanks for posting back with the pics of the messages from your computer. Disk Utility reports "Underlying task reported failure" when repairing a volume is a directory error which cannot be repaired by Disk Utility. Unfortunately, Disk Warrior may not be able to replace the rebuilt directory, either. Tech Tool Pro has a better chance of repairing it, although this particular directory issue can be stubborn, and is often rooted in a hardware issue. Your surest bet is to backup/clone the information on the HDD using a utility like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner, completely reformat and erase the HDD (directions below), then restore data from backup.
    Formatting, Partitioning Erasing an External HDD
    • Connect external HDD to computer
    • Turn on external HDD
    • Start up computer and log in
    • Go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility and launch DU.
    • Select your HDD (manufacturer ID) in left side bar.
    • Select Partition tab in main panel.
    • Click on Options button
    • Select Apple Partition Map (PPC Macs) or GUID Partition Table (Intel Macs)
    • Click OK
    • Select number of partitions in pull-down menu above Volume diagram.
    For more partitions than one, after you have selected the number of partitions adjust the size of the partition by selecting the top partition and typing in the size; then move down if more adjustments need to be made.
    (See Dr. Smoke’s FAQ Backup and Recovery for tips on partitioning external HDD)
    • Type in name in Name field (usually Macintosh HD)
    • Select Volume Format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
    • Click Partition button at bottom of panel.
    • Select Erase tab
    • Select the sub-volume (indented) under Manufacturer ID
    • Check to be sure your Volume Name and Volume Format are correct.
    • Click Erase button
    • Repeat above procedure to erase each partition
    • Quit Disk Utility.
    cornelius

  • External Hard Drives not Mounting after Yosemite Upgrade

    I've just upgraded to Yosemite, and none of my external (USB) hard drives are mounting (they don't even appear in Disk Utility).
    Any ideas?

    MacBook Pro 2009. 250 SD, HD 8Gb Ram.
    I have had this issue for about a year...with no resolve!
    Apple and the User community have not been able to solve issue.
    I have had to work around it since the Oct 2013 Mavericks upgrade which “killed” (rendered unmountable) both my USB and Optical drives.
    Hundreds of replies and remedies have not corrected my issue. Hundreds of replies stating that if there was a global issue it would of been fixed by Apple, not true. And dismissive replies stating that there must be a hardware issue are very discouraging.
    So now, hoping to help the voiceless masses, I'm forced to share my experience.
    As I stated, I have been having the issue since one of the Mavericks upgrades. The upgrade rendered externally attached drives unmountable...They are all seen in Disk Utility. They are just not mountable. Regardless of the flavor of the disk format, either Mac or PC, they are found, seen and refuse to mount. I can see them using Terminal commands, I can see them in System Report. I can reset all the memory I want...turn it off, reset, sleep, turn on, restart...NOPE...And the optical drive takes in disks but ejects them after an attempted mounting. Keep in mind, there are no physical issues with either USB or optical drives.
    So now...I have had enough and need to correct the issue or buy a new equipment - starting to get into software development and need working equipment!!!
    For the past month, I have been visiting the Apple store to assist in my issues...Back Story: I'm an IT Field Tech for the largest department store in the country and I have the good fortune of dropping in the Apple store anytime I want...The Geniuses booted the MB with a bootable image of Mavericks, and the USB and Optical drives WORKED fine...So, after I had stumped the Geniuses with my problems, we agreed that we would attempt to format and re-image the MacBook...Fine, do it, it's backed-up, how you ask? - Via my wireless My Book Live 3T drive, which only took 24 hours to backup, AKA Time Machine!
    Great news! The re-image of Mavericks proved to work! I WAS able to mount external drives attached! How is that possible? Don't know, don't care! It just worked! So happy!
    But wait! I then took the laptop home. Connected to my WiFi, to update Mavericks to the latest version...Good so far! Then it came time for a Time Machine restore, AKA Migration Assistance restore...So, I proceeded to migrate data back to my MB via wireless drive, good so far, booted in Migration Assistant, and I chose to restore everything except the network files, thinking that may be an issue...22 Hours later, the MB migrated without issue...all apps and personal files had migrated! YAY!
    BUT NOW THE USB AND OPTICAL DRIVES FAILED TO MOUNT!!!
    Great now what? I know, I will just re-image and start again...WAIT, I don't have a Mavericks Install Disk, no problem, I will just create a bootable USB drive with the Mavericks Install Image I downloaded onto my MB this month...NO YOU CANNOT, because you have no use of the USB drives!...And, Apple stopped making OS CDs back in 2009...Oh, and that wouldn't of done me any good, because the optical dive was unusable, anyway!
    SO, back to the Apple store with my head hanging! At this point, Yosemite came out the previous Thursday, so no more Mavericks images, great! Perhaps the new OS will alleviate my nightmare!!!!...So, they re-imaged my Mac with Mavericks, drives worked again! SO, I took my MB home and attempted to download the new OS, Yosemite...which only took 2 days due to the amount of traffic on Apple's servers!...Anyway, Yosemite finally installed without out issue! Drives still worked! And so, I shutdown and restarted the system...No issues, USB and optical drives worked beautifully! Yay, Yosemite!...Fixed all my troubles!!!...Not so fast...
    And so, I, again, attempted to do a Time Machine restore, via WiFi, this time it took 24 hours to restore...AND it worked! All apps and personal files transferred without issue, So happy! Put the laptop in Sleep and left it home and went to work! Came back from work, tested the system without issues. Rebooted...USB and Optical drive are NOT MOUNTABLE!
    So now, what is the file that the restore keeps pushing to my MB that kills the USB and optical drives?
    I would just stop restoring from a Time Machine backup, but the only way to get into the TM image is to use Migration Assistant. I cannot view the date in time of the image in TM's Star Wars time line. So, I'm forced to back up everything from the image in Migration Assistance. Not sure that it being an encrypted image has anything to do with it...
    ...Regardless, what is being “restored” to the MB that continues to configure the OS in such a way that makes all external drives unmountable...keep in mind, my external keyboard, hub and mouse are usable via USB.

  • My motherboard "fried" on my computer when the fan quit working.  I cannot access my hard drive on my old computer.  I just downloaded ITunes on my new computer; assumed it would pull all my playlists in under my Apple ID and password-no such luck. Help?

    My motherboard "fried" on my computer when the fan quit working.  I cannot access my hard drive on my old computer.  I just downloaded ITunes on my new computer; assumed it would pull all my playlists in under my Apple ID and password-no such luck. Help Please?

    If your external drive does not have an independent power supply, you may wish to consider a couple of lower-cost options before tossing the drive. Bus-powered drives have no external power source and must get all their power from the computer. They can exceed the computer's USB energy budget.
    Cheapest option:
    1 Meter USB 2.0 A to 5 Pin Mini B Cable - Auxiliary USB "Y" Power Design for external hard drives.
    This gets power from two of the computers USB porst sna can provide enough power to wake up an under-performaing bus-powered drive.
    If you don't have enough ports to use this, try the next cheapest option:
    Newer Technology 7 Port Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Hub with Power Adapter for Mac & PC
    Such a hub has a an independent power supply to make up for wahat the comptuer fails to provide.

  • 2 different brand USB external hard drives not mounting- Firewire ok

    Hi, first timer here so apologies in advance.
    i have to different brand external hard disks and they both show up fine with a firewire connection. the trouble is that i need to use the usb connection and neither show up. (shows up in system profiler though but not disk utility.) why USB if i can use Firewire? I will be using the disk to connect to a Wii console via usb port and the Wii is not recognizing either disk either?
    Any ideas on how to get one of these disks to mount by USB?
    cables are fine as work with USB only hard disks.
    Thanks in advance

    Hello Bob,
    Thanks for your reply.
    Unfortunately it does not show up at all in "disk utility". But appears in System Profiler under USB. This is true of 2 different external hard drives that mount fine with the firewire cables. One is a 3.5 inch and the other is a 2.5 inch portable. The USB cable is not faulty as tested it with another USB peripheral. Now a big believer in coincidences. Am i doing something wrong?
    any other thoughts?
    thanks again

  • I cannot open my hard drive...help please

    I cannot open my hard drive.I have no idea why not.
    Everything was perfectly fine this morning, I shut down, and nothing was different.
    Later today I turned on the computer again to do some work, and when I click the hard drive icon it will not open, it seems that the whole finder or hard drive "resets" or "redoes itself"
    No error message displays of any kind.
    I have not installed anything or changed anything at all recently.NOTHING.
    I already tried putting in my Tiger disc, and ran first aid, verified and repaired the preferences, and verified and repaired the disc, and after taking out the Tiger original disc...no, that didn't help either.
    As far as I can tell everything else is fine, Safari works, my calculator and calendar and I Tunes and all that works fine.
    HELP

    UUUGGHHHH ... On a friends computer right now...
    I had to start all over from the disc, after I, as the "other user" with (Admin. priviledges) went and tried to change the permissions of "original me", and it wouldn't let other user/me #2 do it, and so I kept trying, but then I couldn't get back into original me, it wouldn't let me login, kept saying you cannot login at this time, and I couldn't stay on Safari in user#2 long enough to try and write you before it "blinked out", so, I put in the original Tiger disc from the beginning and did an an archive install,BUT did not check the keep users and settings checkbox, so, my budget and things I was working on were kept intact....YEAH...but the original problem was never determined.
    I hope that does not happen again, I still don't even know what caused it all in the first place.
    THASNK YOU SO MUCH !!! for trying to help me.

  • WD hard drive not mounting on startup...

    Grrr! This is driving me nuts! I have a WD MyBook Essential 2.0T USB hard drive connected to my iMac 27" i7, and every time I reboot the iMac, the drive fails to remount. Disk Utility doesn't recognize it, either. My only option is to disconnect the USB cable and then reconnect it. The drive then shows up. But pulling a cable is so very not an acceptable solution! Don't think data can be corrupted if the drive hasn't mounted, but still....
    I have four other, older WD drives and none do this. I had a more recent WD MyBook Essential drive that also wouldn't mount on startup on my old MacBook Pro, wouldn't take the updated firmware, and kept corrupting files, and I ultimately replaced it with this new 2.0T drive shortly after getting the new iMac. But even with a new drive, new iMac, and different cable, I still can't get the WD drive to mount upon reboot. Arrggghh!
    Has Western Digital done something different with these newer drives? How can I get this thing to mount after a reboot?
    Thanks!

    Steve Porritt wrote:
    Has Western Digital done something different with these newer drives? How can I get this thing to mount after a reboot?
    Thanks!
    Western Digital has been playing with their firmwares for years. They keep trying to maximize power efficiency to anticipate when the computer will use the drive and shut it down when it's not required. This isn't really a good thing for Time Machine, and I don't want any vendor to constantly change their firmware for their purposes. Many other companies seem to be able to build drives that just work.
    I've updated the firmwares on many of these drives for clients because they performed so flakey with both USB and Firewire. I think there are problems with the firmwares being designed to maximize power consumption at the cost of not being always ready for Time Machine. Some of the WD firmware is actually on the drive itself, not the interface chipset, so problems return when you swap out the drives in the cases...
    In addition, I have no need for all of the freeware/backup programs and other features they junk up these drives with. I just want reliable drives for backing up files, without having to uninstall their embedded programs. I found this review that pretty much sums it up for me: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1FBX79QK9IR9N/ref=cmcr_prviewpnt#R1FBX79QK9IR9N
    Looks like you've been burned twice by their eager, innovative engineers.
    I buy all of my external hard drives from OWC at http://www.macsales.com

  • Cannot find my hard drive connected to my extreme

    Hi - I am using a Windows 7 PC and cannot find the hard drive connected to my airport extreme.  I have gone into manaul set up on the extreme and asked it to share the files which it has confirmed, yet when I go into windows explorer I cannot see the drive at all ...... can I please ask for some assitance?

    Just want to be sure of three things first if you don't mind:
    Does the 802.11n AirPort Extreme Base Station (AEBSn) have a Base Station Name that includes a space? For example: My AirPort Extreme. If it does, rename it so that it does not have any spaces or use the underscore character between words.
    Does the shared HDD have a volume name that includes a space? If it does, again, remove them or add underscore characters.
    Is the HDD formatted in NTFS? If so, the AEBSn does the best job of sharing HDDs formatted in HFS+, then FAT32. It will NOT work properly with HDDs formatted in NTFS. If the HDD is very high capacity, you may want to borrow a friend's Mac to format it in HFS+ or get a utility that lets your PC format/read/write to HFS+ volumes. Regardless of it being formatted in HFS+, the AEBSn will share it out using both the AFP (for Macs) and SMB (for Windows/Linux) file sharing protocols ... so Windows PC should not have any difficulty accessing it.

  • Old MacBook Pro boots no further than the apple image and the ball spins aimlessly as if it cannot detect the hard drive

    My old MacBook Pro displays the apple image on start up then hangs with the ball spinning continuously. Seems it cannot detect the hard drive. Can I start up holding down certain keys to bypass the problem. Running snow leopard and don't have a start up disk.

    Try the procedures in this support article;
    http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570
    You may also use the original install disk.  When you get to the point where the menu bar shows on top of the display, select Utilities.  The open Disk Utility from the drop down menu and try to repair the disk.
    Ciao.

Maybe you are looking for