Thumb drive won't appear on desktop.

On my iBookG4 running 10.4.11, my thumb drive won't appear on the desktop when I insert it in the USB port. How do I make it appear? This just happened, as yesterday, it appeared. Help!

Those drives commonly come formatted for use with a PC. DU can't repair that format. Do you know what format yours has? You can try to erase/reformat it. If it Mac formatted right now and can't repair it then that may indicate the drive is truly history.

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USB Thumb Drive won't appear or mount on Desktop

I'm preparing to upgrade to Mavericks, and before I do, I want to make a bootable drive on a PNY USP 2.0 FD Media thumb drive. When I insert the thumb drive into a USB port, it doesn't mount. It doesn't appear on the desktop. The drive is listed in Disk Utility, but Verify, Mount, and other First Aid options are greyed out. I can only unmount the drive from Disk Utilities. I've checked the Finder preferences, and External Disks is checked under "Show these items on the desktop". I'm not sure if I've used this thumb drive before or not. I was trying to check this disk before I created a bootable disk. I might have already done this shortly after I purchased my iMac, but I'm not sure. Other USB drives mount fine, and show all of their contents. I'm using an iMac currently running OS X 10.8.5. I'd appreciate any hints on what might be going on here. Thanks!

Pretty much sounds like the USB Drive is karput. Buy another one.
Cheers
Pete

Drive Enclosure hard drive won't appear on desktop

I just recently bought the Tekserve Aluminum FireWirk 400 Drive Enclosure.
I had an internal hard drive on my G3 that I tock out and installed into the
enclosure. The hard drive seems to start up and the blue enclosure light is on but the drive dose not appear on my desk top of my Mac mini.
Machine Name:Mac mini
Machine Model:PowerMac10,2
CPU Type:PowerPC G4 (1.5)
I tried disk utility and got the following.
Disk Utility
74.5 GB macpower
Disk Description :Macpower
Total Capacity :74.5 GB (80,026,361,856 Bytes)
Connection Bus :FireWire
Write Status : Read/Write
Connection Type :External
S.M.A.R.T. Status :Not Supported
Connection ID :512384776805421
I TRIED RUNNING A DISK REPAIR.
BELOW IS THE LOG REPORT
Mac OS X Version 10.4.6 (Build 8I127)
2006-07-17 14:02:47 -0400
2006-07-17 14:02:48.378 SystemUIServer[76] lang is:en
Jul 17 14:04:53 michael-coynes-mac-mini diskarbitrationd[35]: unable to repair /dev/disk1s6 (status code 0x00000008).
Disk Utility started.
Verify and Repair disk “X”
Invalid Volume Header
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid node structure
Rebuilding Catalog B-tree.
The volume X could not be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
Disk Utility stopped repairing “X” because the following error was encountered:
The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error
Repair attempted on 1 volume
1 volume could not be repaired
Verify permissions for “Macintosh HD”
Determining correct file permissions.
parent directory ./Users/Shared/SC Info does not exist
Permissions differ on ./private/var/log/secure.log, should be -rw------- , they are -rw-r-----
Permissions verification complete
The privileges have been verified or repaired on the selected volume
Mount of “X” succeeded
Mount of “X” succeeded
Verify and Repair disk “X”
Invalid Volume Header
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid node structure
Rebuilding Catalog B-tree.
The volume X could not be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
Any suggestions?
Thanks
-Mike

Hey Mike,
If you need the data off the drive then you'll have to purchase another disk utility program like Disk Warrior.
If you don't need the data then I suggest you just partition it and start fresh. I have "fixed" a few drives by just partitioning them. Please note: you will loose everything on the drive!
Greg

External hard drive won't appear on desktop

I just bought a Western Digital passport 250gb external hard drive and when I plug it into my iBook G4 (version OS 10.4.10) it will not appear (via usb 2.0). I tried plugging it into a macbook and it appeared. Any ideas would be very much appreciated.

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
I am not sure just which model drive this is. Does it get its power from the computer? If so, it might be trying to use a bit more power than the iBook can deliver through the USB port. Some USB ports are very marginal and can deliver only the barest minimum of power, which sometimes is not enough for an external device. A powered hub might help.
Good luck!

External hard drive won't appear on my desktop

I'm trying to run a backup, but my hard drive won't appear on my desktop. I see it in Disk Utility, so I know it's there...
...any suggestions?
Thanks,
kevin

Kevin - There might be a few reasons as to why your external drive won't appear have you tried any of these suggestions:-
STEP ONE - Confirm that the drive is being seen by the system
Click the Apple icon and select About This Mac.
Click More Info.
Select the Drives and Volumes tab.
If the Iomega Hard Disk drive is not listed under the USB/FireWire arrow, proceed to STEP THREE.
If the Hard Disk drive is listed, continue with the next step.
STEP TWO - Format the Hard Disk drive to Mac HFS format
The Iomega Hard Disk drive is factory formatted to FAT32 for maximum compatibility. If you have not reformatted the disk or the disk is formatted to FAT32:
The disk may mount very slowly in OS X if the disk is FAT32 formatted.
Mac OS X will not mount any DOS (FAT32) partition larger than 128GB. For more information, please check the Apple® Web site at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107483
Warning: Erasing your Hard Disk drive will erase all of the information stored on the disk. If possible, back up your data before erasing the hard drive. Mac formatted disks are not cross compatible with other operating systems, such as Windows®, without the purchase of additional third-party software.
Double-click the Mac hard drive icon.
Double-click the Applications folder.
Double-click the Utilities folder.
Double-click the Disk Utilities icon.
Highlight the drive in the left window.
Click the Erase tab.
Select Mac OS Extended.
Click the Erase button and then click Erase from the confirmation window.
If the Hard Disk drive now mounts, you are ready to use the drive.
If the Hard Disk drive does not mount, continue with the next step.
STEP THREE - Are the Mac OS X drivers detecting the drive properly?
The Iomega Hard Drive may not mount if you are using Mac OS X versions under 10.1.3. If you are not using Mac OS X 10.1.3 or higher, please visit the Apple® Web site at http://www.apple.com/macosx/ for information on getting the latest version.

External Hard Drive won't appear on PC (want cross platform)

I have an external USB Hard Drive. I formatted it using the Disk Utility, OS Format and Journaling. Did a small partition in case I needed a system boot drive. Now my sis needed to backup her laptop (Dell laptop), but the drive won't appear in My Computer, it recognizes there is a USB device on the lower task bar, but no drive anywhere.
Do I have to reformat? what steps do I need to make this USB drive cross-platform friendly?
Paul

Hi, Paul.
You may not want to reformat the drive as FAT-32 since there is a limit on the size of the partition, the maximum file size, and other issues, especially if her Dell's drive is formatted as NTFS (FAT-32 does not support NTFS extended attributes). FAT-32 is unsuitable for backing-up Mac OS X volumes as it cannot preserve the extended attributes (permissions, etc.) employed by Mac OS X.
It's really best if you each have your own external hard drive for backup, as part of implementing a comprehensive Backup and Recovery solution, such as I use and detail in my "Backup and Recovery" FAQ. You also don't want one person inadvertently writing over another person's backups, which could happen if one is not careful. Furthermore, it is often easiest for recovery.
How one handles backup in cross-platform environments is tricky and depends on the native formats employed by the different computers involved, and whether backup will be performed over a network or by directly connecting backup drives to the computers one is backing up.
To enable her Dell to use the Mac-formatted drive, install Mediafour's MacDrive for Windows on the PC. MacDrive for Windows is probably the state-of-the-art application for enabling you to use Mac-formatted disks and hard drives on Windows-based PCs.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Help. My WD Time Machine Drive won't appear anymore on the desktop. It won't appear on my windows OS machine as well. Can anyone help me?

I made the darnest mistake when I tried cleaning up my time machine drive by deleting some of the "back-up" restore points.
Since then, the external drive does not appear anymore on my mac's desktop. Nor does it appear on my windows OS laptop.
I tried using DISK UTILITY on my Mac and the drive appears there. I was able to run Repair Disk, though No Errors appear. I "cannot eject" using the EJECT button at the top of the application as it prompts me with a message
"EJECT FAILED --
The disk “WD Ext HDD 1021 Media” could not be unmounted.
Make sure that all applications and files are closed on this disk."
Same goes when I try using a WINDOWS OS machine. It does not appear on Windows Explorer. Though when it does appear in the "eject list".
I assume that deleting some of the restore points (at random) was the cause of this.
How can I repair it? I have some sentimental and personal files (i.e. family pictures) that are also stored on the drive.
Thanks in advance.

Other than the Disk Repair from the Disk Utility, I would suggest resetting the PRAM: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11243.
Tha's kind of a last ditch effort though. Can you put it in another mac computer with the mac os? Does it show up there?

Hard Disk Won't Appear on Desktop

Since upgrading to OS Lion, when I plug in my external hard drive (WD) it won't appear on the desktop at all. It does show up in Disk Utility and now says it is not mounted. I'm not sure what's going on here. I don't really want to have to reformat my drive as it has all my Time Machine backups on it.
Does anyone have any ideas?

Click on the top left corner of you screen where it says finder and click on that and then scroll down to preference and click on it. Then in that screen you will be able to see where you can choose what icons you would like to see on your desktop.

My device won't appear on desktop of DataViz'z Documents to Go. Help?

Anyone out there solved the "Device won't appear on 'Documents to Go' desktop" I've tried several times and DataViz Support basically sent me their trouble shooting document which I had already gone through and tried but no luck. They have wiped their hands of the issue and said Good luck.
The problem is that I can't synch Documents to Go (ver. 1.1) on my iPod Touch (1st gen) with OS3.0 with the DTG desktop. My device won't appear on the desktop. I my desktop is a MacBook Pro 17" with latest OSX 5.7
- I don't get any specific error messages; the device just doesn't show up in the DTG desktop window
- my internet connection is fine and both apps are on the same WiFi network
- my Firewall settings are set to "Allow all incoming connections"
- also tried setting Firewall set to allowing just DTG
- I successfully installed and ran the iPhone/iTouch app "Remote" (it shows up in iTunes
This is weird. I've had pretty good luck syncing any and all iPod Touch apps with the Desktop, but not being able to do this one pretty much renders Documents to Go useless.
Any suggestions?
Thanks
Jim

I solved my own problem. The device was there all along. However on my iPod Touch I noticed I have no user name - - it is just a blank. So it appears in DTG desktop as a blank line which looks invisible to me, i.e. no device. But if I click on the blank line, there it is: a successful link and My DocsToGo.
I discovered all this by syncing my wife's iPhone, which does have a visible name.
Now I just have to figure out why my iPod Touch has no user name.
Thanks
Jim

After Airport Extremem Updates - Multiple Hard Drives Won't Appear

After the most recent firmware updates (I'm currently at 7.2.3, but I noticed the symptoms with the one released a few weeks ago, too.) I'm noticing some serious problems with my external harddrives, connected to my airport extreme.
I hae a USB hub connected to my extreme, that connects a printer and two external haddrives. Before my connection to these harddrives on the extreme was seemless. After the next to last update, I had to recreate the connection all the time (everytime I walked away from the computer, I came back, and it wasn't connected and it often took 2 or 3 long attempts to make it see them again.)
With the latest update one of my drives no longer appears. The first appears under the disks section of airport utility and connects without issue. However, I cannot get the second to be recognized by the extreme. I have tested this HD directly to the computer and it appears to have no issues. It spins up, I'm testing with all the same calbes, everything is browsable, etc. I put it back to the USB hub off the extreme...nada.
Not that it should matter, but the external hard drive that's fallen out of grace suddenly is a Maxtor 500 gig external.
So, any suggestions? Did something change with the recent updates to disallow two external drives to appear with extreme?

since the drives are external, connect them to a Mac and run diskutility on them and check for errors using first aid....my guess is that you have volume problems preventing the disks from mounting in the extreme. the extreme does not do error checking and does not have a way of ejecting hard drives. I'm not sure about the TC.

USB Hard Drives Won't Appear in Win 7 (Boot Camp)

[2.7 Ghz Core i7 Macbook Pro 15" running 10.8.5]
I have a 512 GB SSD that I run with a Boot Camp partition. I recently had to reformat the drive because I used a third-party app to resize my Boot Camp partition and it ceased to appear in Finder (though it booted just fine by itself). After formatting the drive, recovering my OSX install via Time Machine, running the Boot Camp Assistant to create a new Boot Camp partition, installing Win 7, and running the Boot Camp setup.exe on the Windows side, I find that USB drives will not appear in Windows Explorer. I hear the "USB chime" when I plug/unplug drives, but drives never shows up. The same USB drives show up just fine in the OSX Finder.
I suspect it's a driver issue because when I first plugged the drive in under Windows I got a message about "Intel USB 3.0 Root Hub" and it was searching for a driver that it never found. However, I ran the Boot Camp setup.exe again, and tried updating the driver in Windows Device Manager. No dice.
This puts me in a spot, because my backup of my previous Boot Camp partition is on an external USB drive (via EaseUS), and when I boot from the EaseUS Recovery CD the USB drive doesn't show up in order to allow me to select the backup file I want to restore. (I would have used Winclone, but my partition was not mountable in OSX at the time due to the corruption. *sigh*)
I could probably live without backing up my previous Windows install since nothing on it is irreplaceable, but I definitely cannot live without being able to plug in a USB drive. What am I missing here?
Thanks!

if your question is how to get windows to work with apple filesystem
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1088460

Internal hard drives won't appear in Disk Util

I have a bizarre problem with my hard drives now. I'm on a 2.4GHz Core2Duo Macbook Pro 15" with 10.5.4. I've switched the hard drive a couple of times before with no issues whatsoever. Now, with the exception of the brand new one that won't hold an install, my internal hard drives don't show up in the install disk's Disk Utility.
I got a new hard drive to try the other day, installed it, booted to my OSX install disk to use Disk Utility. I switched the new disk to GUID and formatted it as journaled like usual. It took 4 hours to do the install, then after the restart it tanked. It booted back to the install disk where I checked it out. It could not repair the file system, and the drive was not "mounted". I mounted it, repartitioned and formatted it, and installed again. This time it stopped halfway through the installation and said the drive might be corrupt.
I unplugged the cable and battery, held the power button for over 5 secs, then just let it sit for about 10minutes with no power source while I thought about this. I put the original drive back in, booted into OSX, and put the new hard drive in an external USB enclosure. I formatted it while in OSX, then rebooted into the install disk and installed OSX on it while it was in the USB case. It took the installation more quickly (about an hour and a half...still not 20min like my old 7200rpm Hitachi 200g), then I booted into its OSX while in the USB drive. It booted ok, so I downloaded the updates and clicked to install them. It then went into a revolving restart. Eventually I decided it was not doing this because it was happy so I shut it off.
I swapped the hard drive out with another new one, and this one would not complete an installation while inside the computer either. It acted similarly while in the USB case. HOWEVER it would always show up as unmounted after a restart and would not recognize the drive inside the computer as a bootable disk.
I put my original drive in there to give up, and it gave me the ? folder. I booted to the install disk and it did not show up in the disk utility. I put my old hard drive in the USB case, booted to the install disk, and it showed that it was there, but unmounted and it could not repair the file system.
I repartitioned my hard drive (i have time machine working..not a huge setback) in the USB case and put it back in the computer. It still would not show up in disk utility. I put it back in the USB case, installed OSX onto it (in about 20min), restarted a couple times, saw that it was working, put it into my computer, and got the ? folder again.
I went out and bought a stardard 160GB SATA 5400rpm Seagate drive to try in there, and this fresh drive is not recognized inside the computer either when I boot into disk utility.
The brand new hard drive WILL show up in Disk Utility when I boot to it from the install disk, but it will not survive a complete installation.
So now I'm running OSX from my original hard drive in a USB case until I can figure out why the old disk recognized inside my laptop is the new hard drive upgrade, but it cannot complete an installation on it.
I'm originally a Windows slave, so I can only think in terms of AHCI or SATA-card drivers, or screwed up bios. But this is all pre-os-boot, and the apple firmware seems to be pretty automatic in picking the right settings to see stuff.

I kind of feel like drawing a flowchart to show all that I've tried. Its difficult to keep everything intelligible while listing the entire last week's efforts at 2:45am. :-/
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41951
I also explained it here, perhaps a bit differently. Maybe some reply there might spark someone's memory of a possible problem. I understand the nature of computers (been 100% geek for 20 years), but I'm hoping there's someone out there with the specific Apple expertise to help me out. Eventually the processes I've taken and my specific situation will become clearer as the questions widdle away at this.
My original 7200rpm SATA drive that works fine won't show up when connected to the SATA cable. I've repartitioned it with HFS, and repartitioned it as free space in the USB enclosure. It simply won't show up in Disk Util. Same with the brand new test SATA drive.
The new SSD SATAII does show up, but after a 4hr install the partition is unmounted and won't show up as a boot option. I can boot to the install disk and repartition it, reinstall, or remount it. But it will never be mounted to be booted from while connected to the computer. I've had 2 of the SSD's to try, one survived one restart, then went into a never-ending restart cycle after I installed the updates. The 2nd has never successfully been mounted after the install to boot from. Now nothing can be mounted to boot from within the computer. I have to boot off of any of these drives from the USB enclosure.
If I install OSX on them while in the USB enclosure, that works, but they will not mount when connected to the SATA cable inside the lappy. The platter style SATA drives won't even be recognized...
Thanks for the instant reply, this is driving me nuts 'cuz it makes almost no sense. Thanks so much to everyone that contributes. I appreciate everything.

External firewire hard drive does not appear on desktop

I have an iMac intel running OS 10.8.1. All of a suddden my firewire external hard drive no longer appears. System profiler does not
recognize it as well. My macbook recognizes it. Rebuilt directory with discwarrior but still no resolution. Any thoughts?

Does it have its own power supply? Try a
SMC RESET
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
Shut down the computer.
Unplug the computer's power cord and ALL peripherals.
Wait 15 seconds.
Attach the computers power cable.
Wait another 5 seconds and press the power button to turn on the computer.
The 5 second timing is important to a successful reset.

Finder & Dock do not work - Mac Hard Drive does not appear on Desktop

Until yesterday, my powerbook was working properly.
This morning, I wanted to use it and I had the following problems after login.
1/ My Mac Hard drive does not appear on my dekstop
2/ My dock appears but no icon works when I click on them. So, I can't open finder. I have no response.
3/ Furthermore, my top bar (with clock, login name, Airport icon...) appears but it is frozed.
I try several solutions as :
- rebooting in safe mode,
- rebooting, with in the same time, hold different keys (option, apple, p & R)...
As of today, no solution works.
Thanks for your help.

A.CHAMP wrote:
Nota: if i used my daugther login (she is not admin), I have the same issues.
Ok, that's good enough. You may be able to repair this with the 10.5.8 Combo Update This is a fuller install, as opposed to an incremental "delta" update so it should overwrite any files that are damaged or missing. It does not matter if you have applied it before.
Remember to Verify Disk before update and repair permissions after update from /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.
EDIT:
I have around 5 Go space left on my Mac
Also, your getting very low on disk space. Try to copy some of the data off to other media. *Do it before you try applying the combo, you'll need the space.*
-mj
Message was edited by: macjack
Message was edited by: macjack

Iomega USB Hard Drive won't appear on my desktop. Please help

Hi, I purchased an Iomega desktop hardrive about 3 months ago and all has been working well.
I had no problems working it with my MacBook Pro and backed up all my files easily. I now need to get some files from my Iomega hard drive, but now when I switch it on nothing appears on the desktop.
I have restarted my Mac and the hard drive several times and still nothing. I even tried using the USB cable that came with my printer in case the cable was faulty, but still nothing.
I have not used the Iomega hard drive for over a month, so am not sure if this may have something to do with it?
Can anyone help me?
Thanks in advance

OK… does the drive appear in Disk Utility else System Profiler? Also, if you are using bus power to run the drive try plugging it into AC. Another possilbility is to place a powered USB hub inbetween the drive and yur MBP as sometime this helps.

Thumb drive won't appear on desktop.

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