Network Drives Disappear from Finder Intermittently

Question

I'm periodically having problems with my Mac recognizing an Iomega Home Media Network Drive. Everything's connected together using an Airport Extreme. Usually the drive will show up under the "Shared" category in the Finder, and I can connect and use it normally.
Every once and awhile, it disappears from that list. I can still connect manually using Go->Connect to Server, but the Finder doesn't pick it up on its own. After a few days or weeks, it'll just show up in the shared list again. No amount of restarting/repairing permissions will fix it. For example, my drive has been missing for about a week now, and after doing nothing special it decided to show back up while I was typing this post.
I've seen this topic come up periodically on the boards, but I couldn't find anything recent or with a solution. Has anyone encountered or come up with a fix for this?
Thanks,
-Jason

Answer 1

I have an Iomega drive that is also fidgety on the network, either in Leopard (when problem arose) or SL (when I found my solution). I actually had to view my drive under the sidebar path ComputerName> Network> AirPortEx> Iomega Drive because I kept getting errors when I tried to view in column view from the shared section despite having the drive set to ignore permissions.
Firstly, this is what I call a workaround, not a fix, as recognition of the drive doesn't work seamlessly in Finder as advertised, but required these extra steps in order for me to always see the drive in the sidebar. Secondly, it may not be absolutely necessary to do all these things, and I am assuming you have the authority on your network to do all these things, but here's what I've done to get my satisfaction:
1. Make sure you set servers to mount on the desktop in Finder prefs and that connected servers and bonjour computers are set up to show in the sidebar
2. Use connect to server if you have to and mount the drive to your desktop
3. Once the drive is on your desktop, open system prefs and go to your login items under Accounts & Authenticate by clicking the lock on the lower left and entering your password
4. Drag the network drive into your login items (and dock, sidebar, or window toolbar if desired)
5. Restart
This may not be the fix you hoped for. You do seem to have to keep the drive mounted, etc. But I do always see it in my sidebar under sharing now, and have no problems viewing anything on it from wherever in the Finder I try to access it (whether from the sidebar in the shared section or under the network area of my computer, in the dock, or from the toolbar). At the very least you never have to Connect to Server again. Hit the drive icon in the dock and it will connect if you get disconnected.
FYI: Make sure you always choose the "ignore" button when/if alerts pop up to tell you that you have been disconnected from the drive because you'll have to remount otherwise. These alerts occur to me only when waking my MBP from sleep. I wait 2-3 seconds, and click on the icon of my Iomega drive that I have in my sidebar, toolbar, or dock and it shows contents just fine, still connected after all.
Message was edited by: snowsister