Invisible Hard Drive

I was installing windows via bootcamp and had to exit the setup.
Now when I start up my Mac, my screen is completely black with a DOS prompt in the upper left corner. It seems as if it still thinks I'm trying to install windows, so it is not allowing me to boot from the HD.
I've tried the "D" and "option key" bootkeys and performed a test...everything is as it should be. However my Hard Drive is nowhere to be seen.
Anybody have any other suggestions?
Thx

Tyco 1,
Based on your description of the issue, it sounds like (as you suspect) the boot sequence is indeed still set to boot the Windows volume to either write files to complete the install or load the Windows OS into memory and can't see either so remains at the DOS prompt screen.
It also sounds like you do not see the OS X partition (large drive icon usually marked 'Macintosh HD' by default) when using the 'Option' key during boot to view the boot options screen. If this is the case, it may be due to corrupt information in PRAM.
Although no one may be certain whether resetting PRAM is the actual 'fix', it will reset the PRAM defaults and should boot to the OS X installation when completed (or allow you to see the OS X partition as a drive in the boot options screen).
At that point, you could reclaim the drive space or retry installing Windows by using Boot Camp Assistant.
Is there a reason you feel this might not work?

Similar Messages

Mounted but invisible hard drive

hello,
i have a powerbook g4 plugged into 3 external hard drives through a firewire hub. i usually never run all three at the same time: one is a small hd with all my music (always on), the other two are seperate video projects. after working on one project for several days, i tried to use the other hard drive, but it will not mount. i looked in disk utility and it is listed, giving me all the specifications and options. however it is not on my desktop nor in finder. also, when i click the "mount" button, nothing happens. please help!
powerbook g4 17" Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Yes, though my point is the external hard drive consists of these elements:
1. The case
2. The Firewire to IDE bridge
3. The power supply and fan (if present)
4. An IDE hard drive.
As my FAQ explains, some Firewire to IDE can make certain drives unreadable if their firmware is too old, and no firmware update is available to make it work with a specific operating system. Disk Utility will read it, but no data will appear to be present:
http://www.macmaps.com/firewirebug2.html
If you move the 4th component into a known working case that has an updated firmware, then you can isolate the possibility of whether the drive is at issue, or one of the other 3 components is at issue.

Hidden hard drive after update

Okay, so I finally performed the software updates that have been popping up everyday. I did it this morning and installed five updates. One was for iTunes, one was a Mac OS X Snow Leopard update and the I can't remember the other three. I went through all the normal steps and restarted the computer. The first 5 minutes were fine and then.... Safari couldn't open new window, application error, spinning beach ball of death, safari unexpectedly quit, iPhoto unexpectedly quit, iTunes unexpectedly quit, can't open any program. I restarted the computer and got a flashing file icon with a question mark.... re-restarted computer, got it to load desktop and went to disk utilities to verify. It couldn't verify hard drive because of something like "incorrect thread count?" and maybe "node corruption?" I can't remember the exact phrasing. It suggested restarting with installation disk. I did. Now the computer won't even recognize its own hard drive. It won't start without a disk in it and even with the disk in it won't reinstall software because it doesn't recognize the hard drive and neither does the disk utility, it doesn't show up AT ALL. I have never had any problems in my three years of owning this computer, I install this little weekly update and now I have an invisible hard drive. I am writing this from my laptop. Has this ever happened to anyone else? Has anyone heard of it? Otherwise, I'm going to have to take it in to someone.

Run the 10.6.5 combo installer here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1324
Repair Permissions before and after.

USB keys and external hard drives disappear after 30 seconds to 1 minute of being mounted.

I just got my 15' MacBook Pro refurbished (by Apple), and everything is working well except my USB ports. My USB keys appear for 30 seconds to as much as 2 minutes before disappearing from eveywhere, my desktop, finder and disk utility. I have a 1 TB WD passport for mac that also has the same problem, but can stay on the desktop and copy files for around 10 minutes. Then error -36 shows up, the hard drive disappears from the desktop and finder, but only appears in disk utility. It is powered as well, The light is currently flashing indicating it's receiving power as I am typing this. But still, no way i can copy anyhting onto it.
I have searched and searched for the solution to this problem, I have tried using apple script to find "invisible hard drives." and that doesn't work either.
On my windows partition in bootcamp, all usb keys work perfectly fine.
Is it because the USB ports are out of energy and dying? If so, should the refurbishment have covered that and replaced them? (Note: refurbishment included everything from my Keysboard to my battery to my Optical drive and cable optical drive flex)
Is there anything I can do to fix this problem on my own?
Any help I can get would be greatly appreciated.

Hi wdmpfm,
Here is something from an earlier post on the -36 error that may help to identify the issue:
A -36 is a disc I/O error. You might have a corrupt file, or a corrupted drive. Try creating a new file and see if you still get the error. If you do, it might be wise to run a Disc Repair program to see if it can find any errors that it can fix.
And one from another thread:
You need to format your drive correctly. New drives come formatted for Windows, & then they seem to work — but not properly.
+Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility+
Choose one of the +Mac OS Extended+ formats.
Obviously first you will have to back-up all the data you have already put on the drive, because it will all be lost when you re-format.
Hope one of these may help!
Cheers,
GB

How do I move users, including my user library (which is invisible) to a different hard drive?,

I have two 750 GB hard drives in my new mac mini. Lion is installed on hard drive A and I want to move users to hard drive B. I have dragged the user files from HD A to HD B and have re-mapped the users to the folders. Turns out, in Lion the users libraries are hidden and won't copy. I can unhide them (using Finder, go to folder, ~/Library, GO). But it will not let me copy the library folders because it is invisible.

Open the Terminal application in the Utilities folder and paste this to unhide the user library:
sudo chflags nohidden ~/Library
Hit enter and put your password in.

External hard Drive Invisible on Mac Mini used as a file server

We're using a Mac Mini as our small office file server. There are multiple external Hard drives connected. All of the drives show up and are accessable on the networked computers but on the Mini itself, some are only accessable through Disk Utility. The inaccesable drives are not on the desktop nor in the sidebar in Finder. Some drives show up on the desktop and finder. The Finder preferences to display external drives on the desktop is checked. I have tried using sudo chflags commands to make the drives visible. Nothing has worked. The only place they show up on the Mini they are physically connected to is in Disk Utility.

I thought it was only on my Mini but guess others have the same issues too! Sometimes the share would be invisible on the user's computer's desktop but still accessible on the Shared sidebar. Would run the sudo chflags on the user's computer and would appear on the desktop again for everyone. Lately, it's happening on the server itself after a reboot. The volumes would be invisible even on /Volumes but sudo chflags works for me. Hope there's a fix for this.

My hard drive is invisible?

Hello,
I have a bit of a weird issue that I haven't stumbled across before. My girlfriend was using my computer over the weekend for school and such, and when I came back, my normal hard drive is gone. Or well invisible. I have it in two partitions, one for Mac OS X and one for Windows XP. The Mac OS X partition is invisible in the Finder. It is not on the desktop (where the Windows XP partition and my external HD is) nor at the left on the Finder windows. Neither is it visible if I go to my username's computer, and if I cmd-click on the name of a Finder window (to see the path), the hard drive is greyed out like it is an invisible folder. I've never experienced this before.
Can anyone help me?
Kind regards,
Rasmus Lindén

Actually this is a surprisingly common bug, and there have been at least two bug reports filed on it that I know of. Take a look at the article I wrote on the problem:
http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/invisible.html
The AppleScript should fix it.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Hard drive invisible

Hello,
Since upgrading to 10.5.2, my primary hard drive has become invisible. I can make it reappear using "setfile v -a /" or "sudo chflags nohidden /", but soon thereafter, the drive disappears again. I understand this is a known issue, but have any permanent solutions been posted or has the issue been addressed by Apple?
Thanks,
Jacob

If you have added spotlight comments to the drive it will be hidden after an index even if you set it to unhidden. The next time it does an index the drive icon disappears again.
Here is how to make a hard drive icon visible permanently after adding spotlight comments to the drive.
Remove items from privacy that you want indexed.
From Terminal
chflags nohidden /Volumes/thenameofthehiddendrive
killall Finder
The drive is now visible.
From Terminal
ls -al@ /Volumes/thenameofthehiddendrive
If from the results you see a "com.apple.metadata:kMDItemFinderComment" then you have the spotlight problem, if you do not see that file then you do not have the spotlight comment problem.
If you do continue with ....
From Terminal
cd /Volumes/thenameofthehiddendrive
xattr -d com.apple.metadata:kMDItemFinderComment .
Note the space and period at the end as they are necessary.

My internal hard drive went hidden/invisible

I have two internal hard drives in my mac tower. One is the system HD and the other is a raid mainly for storage. The other day the raid suddenly went hidden. I could see it on other computers on the network, but not on the the physical computer it is in. When I reveal hidden files (using "defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE" in terminal) I can see it but it greyed out/ invisible. Is there something that I did to randomly hide it? Is there an easy way to unhide it, and perferably not messing with terminal?

Can't believe I spent days reformating my hard drive, restoring it, getting another hard drive... and it was all a cable that failed. I wonder what can make an internal cable like that fail (seems like the least likely part of all to fail).
Thanks PlotinusVeritas
Thanks to ifixit:
bit.ly/1q0EnOx
If you can't fix it, you don't own it!

Time Machine - External Hard Drive Read only error

Just recently got a Iomega 1TB MiniMax FireWire 800 USB 2.0 Desktop Hard Drive and used Time Machine to backup my computer. This was my first time using Time Machine and it successfully backed up 350 GBs. It continued to do backups every hour. When I turned my computer off and then turned it on the next day Time Machine wouldn't allow me to do a backup because it said the hard drive was read only. When I checked info it said it was read/write. I used disc utility to verify disc it said it could not verify disc do a disc repair. Disc repair failed and it said reformat disc. I erased the hard drive tried again and I got the same error message. The hard drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I searched this forum and the trouble shooting links and couldn't find anything on how to correct this. Any help on this problem would be appreciated.

See the following:
What to do if Time Machine reports you don't have permission
This was posted in the Apple Discussions by V.K. I have only modified it slightly to be more generic.
The problem seems to be that 10.5.6 changes permissions on a file so that even the root user doesn't have write peivileges. I have no idea why they did this. The workaround suggested in [an]other post will probably work, too, but i did something less drastic. Instead of deleting the file I changed permissions on it, and it worked just fine. An added benefit is that the permission change seems to stick, so you don't have to delete the file every time you change a drive.
[Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt [enter] the following command:
sudo chmod 644 /volumes/"TM drive name"/.xxxxxxxxxxxx
The name of the file .xxxxxxxxxxxx is based on the MAC address of your computer and will be different for every computer. Put the name of the TM drive in the above and keep the quotes.
You'll have to enter your admin password (which you won't see) which is normal.
This was edited by Kappy just for cleanup.
Enable Finder to Show Invisible Files and Folders
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following command line then press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
To turn off the display of invisible files and folders enter or paste the following command line and press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Alternatively you can use one of the numerous third-party utilities such as TinkerTool or ShowHideInvisibleFiles - VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Also, see User Tips for Time Machine for help with TM problems. Also you can select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine" to locate articles on how to use TM. See also Mac 101- Time Machine.
Message was edited by: Kappy

Time Machine once worked, now external hard drive is "read only"

I have a 2005 iMac G5, running OS X 10.5. Had some power issues, and reinstalled (and archived) my OS a couple of time.
Recently purchased Western Digital 1TB external hard drive for back up. It worked once or twice, but now shows "read only" status.
Disk Utility won't do anything, because it's read only (can't repair, erase, partition or convert).
Hard drive works on PC running Windows 7, and newer Mac with Snow Leopard, just not the one computer I need it for. Any suggestions?

This may help:
What to do if Time Machine reports you don't have permission
This was posted in the Apple Discussions by V.K. I have only modified it slightly to be more generic.
The problem seems to be that 10.5.6 changes permissions on a file so that even the root user doesn't have write peivileges. I have no idea why they did this. The workaround suggested in [an]other post will probably work, too, but i did something less drastic. Instead of deleting the file I changed permissions on it, and it worked just fine. An added benefit is that the permission change seems to stick, so you don't have to delete the file every time you change a drive.
[Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt [enter] the following command:
sudo chmod 644 /volumes/"TM drive name"/.xxxxxxxxxxxx
The name of the file .xxxxxxxxxxxx is based on the MAC address of your computer and will be different for every computer. Put the name of the TM drive in the above and keep the quotes.
You'll have to enter your admin password (which you won't see) which is normal.
This was edited by Kappy just for cleanup.
Enable Finder to Show Invisible Files and Folders
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following command line then press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
To turn off the display of invisible files and folders enter or paste the following command line and press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Alternatively you can use one of the numerous third-party utilities such as TinkerTool or ShowHideInvisibleFiles - VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Also visit the User Tips found at the top of this forum's Topics list: Time Machine User Tips.

How do I install OS on a new hard drive?

Recently my hard drive failed (for the second time in two months) and when I turn on my macbook pro, a blinking folder with a question mark appears. I opened up my laptop and a friend's laptop and put his external hard drive into my computer and it booted up fine with his OS, data, etc. From that I figured I could conclude that the hard drive cable was not the issue and rather it was the hard drive itself. Today I bought a new hard drive and installed it but the blinking folder / question mark still appears. So I made a bootable install disc and booted holding C. Doing this gave me a couple options. One of them was to install the operating system (mavericks). I clicked on this option but the only disk that it registered was the CD and there was no hard drive to select to install the OS on. But I went back and went into Disk Utility where I noticed that the hard drive was registering in the side bar. So... any help?
Thanks!

You are very welcome.
When it installs, it will automatically tear off a very small (210MB) partition for EFI Boot loading and another one (650MB) for Recovery_HD. These will normally remain invisible but they are there.
If you are backing up with Time Machine, versions after 10.7.4 create a Recovery_HD on the Time Machine drive as well, and you can boot from that to do Internet Recovery.

Cannot see a particular file on an External Hard Drive- file is not hidden!

Hi folks,
I think this should be a common problem, but I couldn't seem to find an exact match to my topic in the search, so I hope you guys don't mind helping me out if this has been asked before!
Well my problem is basically stated in my subject. A few days ago, I plugged in my friends external hard drive to copy some files off of. Everything loaded fine once I plugged it in, but the problem was that the file that I needed to copy was invisible in my finder! Other files were there, and the remaining disk space indicated that it was there, but the file itself was not!
I disconnected and reconnected the HD several times but to the same problem. I tried to search for it in the HD directory, but it didn't bring up any results.
My friend confirmed that the file was not hidden, and so we plugged it into her sisters Mac Book to test it and it was there! I ended up having to copy it from the Mac Book then transferring it back to my iMac, but I'm rather concerned about this problem because I wouldn't want it happening again!
One slight problem now is that I don't have my friends HD to test any solutions at the moment, so I guess my main question is to know why does this happen/what causes this to occur? I'm think it's my iMac acting up, because it has been running a bit slower and noisier lately, so I'm thinking of reformatting my iMac? What do you guys think?
Cheers!

Hmmm, only thing that comes to mind at the moment is Permissions, Admin Rights, Groups, or HW/SW!

How Do You "Move" Items/Applications from the Mac Hard Drive?

Hi,
As the subject line suggests I need to "move" things from my regular Mac Hard Drive to the additional Hard Drive I installed. My normal (forgive my lack of technical talk) hard drive is almost full. I would like to move things like iTunes, iPhoto etc to my new hard drive (1TB) so that I can free up space on my current more regularly used hard drive. Is there an easy way to do this?
Ali

There's various approaches you can take. Personally I would try to leave applications and the system on the main drive and just move data files to another drive. Some applications really want to be run from the main drive and will become cranky if you put them elsewhere because things aren't where they expect them to be.
Moving files is often just a matter of dragging them to the new place. Note that if this new place is another drive the files get copied and you will have to delete the originals from the original drive once you are done copying.
Applications can have a complex structure with bits and pieces of files all over the place, some may be invisible. While these can be copied, as I said before it is often best to leave them on the main drive.
Just for your information, you posted your software question in the Apple.com > Support > Discussions > Power Mac G5 > Power Mac G5 (tower) hardware questions area. Your computer information says you are running a Mac Pro and Snow Leopard (which won't run on a G5). It doesn't really matter in this case but if you have a platform specific question in future, for fastest response you might want to make sure it gets into the correct forum.

Share a Hard Drive with Multiple Drives and Users

Background: I have an Airport Extreme (4th Generation) with two external hard drives connected via USB 2.0 and USB hub. I have Airport Utility setup to allow access to both drives via user accounts and passwords. From what I have gathered the way in which the user accounts and passwords work is the Airport Extreme makes two directories at to root level of the hard drive, 'Users' and 'Shared'. All files located in the 'Shared' directory are available to all user accounts setup in Airport Utility. Within the 'Users' directory are sub-directories named for each user account that is setup. All files located within the user directories are available to each respective user.
My trouble is the ability to see both the 'Shared' folders and the respective user folder when I authenticate with a user account. I am able to see the files in the 'Shared' directory on each of the two disks but it seems I am only able to see one of the user account directories and files.
Questions: My two questions are:
1) Is my understanding outlined above correct?
2) How might I be able to see the user directory on both disks as well as the 'Shared' directory on both disks.
I am hoping to still be able to use user accounts to access the disks as I have multiple people who store their files.

It didn't. After a night of testing, I found that I could get the router to at least let me create shares if I partitioned it as an MBR drive (GPT would not work at all), but it would not even rcognize a partition sized to 2TiB (tebibytes, 2048 GiB) or even one sized to 2TB (terabytes). The most it would recognize through my trial and error was about 1.5TiB, which I found odd.
This setup would have been too onerous, as it would have made about 746GiB completely unusable on the drive (outside the largest area referenced by an MBR partition table), and I would have had a main partition for files and one that would be invisible to the router (it only read the first partition, obviously).
So luckily, Best Buy took the external hard drive back with no restocking fee (the WD My Book Essentials 3TB is on sale at $150 there if anyone is interested). I ended up just getting a Synology NAS enclosure and 2 2TB hard drives. I'll get those on Thursday (hopefully).

Invisible Hard Drive

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for