WD 1TB ExternaL Hard Disk not seen on desktop/finder

I have been using WD 1TB external USB hard disk for 4 months with my Macbook with Tiger 10.4 on it. I have plugged in the disk after I purchased without any special formatting or anything, and it worked fine so far. It just took a while, about few minutes, for the Macbook to show it on the desktop every time I got it disconnected and connected again. However, this time, I can not see the disk on the desktop nor on the Finder no matter what. I have plugged it in and out several times, I have restarted the machine etc. Nothing works. The disk is quite empty and it works fine with the PC..no cable problem or and disk failure issue for sure. I can see the disk on the Disk Utility app, but I can neither verify nor mount it...Any suggestions would be very helpful..thanks in advance

Unfortuanately WD external HD's have a pretty bad reputation with Macs. It has something to do with their enclosures as their internal HD's seem to work just fine. I would recommend exchanging that drive for one with a higher quality enclose. Just about any other manufacturer would be fine however the 3 best IMHO are:
OWC Mercury Elite Pro series
Lacie Quadra d2 series
G-Tech G-Drive series
All have similar features and build quality. I would be comfortable using any of the three but I've been successfully been using the Lacie's for 3+ years.
Roger

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External Hard Disk not showing up on Finder

Hi
My HP Pocket Media Drive (USB), when plugged into my MacBook, does not show up on the Finder, even though it shows up on System Profiler. It only shows up on Disk Utility in certain occasions (such as after shutting down and starting up again). I have checked my Finder preferences, that external hard drives are shown on desktop.
I have tried resetting my PRAM and SMC too, but I still can't access the hard disk.
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Ian Sen wrote:
I get the following message in a window:
“connecting to server: resolving alias to… (my itunes folder on the external disk).”
On the chance that your Mac has a phantom folder in its Volumes folder, with that external drive not mounted, invoke the Finder menu option Go > Go to Folder. Enter "/Volumes" (without the quotes) in the field and click "Go". In the resulting window if you see anything with a name that resembles your external drive, trash it.
Anyone know how I can have the external hard disk automatically mount onto my desktop (and thereby bypass the need for several click-thru’s via the finder window)?
Once you're able to mount that external drive, open the Accounts panel of System Preferences and click on the lock in the corner to authenticate if needed. Select your account on the left, then the "Login Items" tab. Drag the mounted disk icon into the window then close System Preferences. That disk should now mount when you log in. A Finder window will open, but you can close that manually. If that bothers you sufficiently, if you search these discussion groups you may be able to find threads that discuss how to work around that.

Iomega 1Tb external hard drive not seen by my HP Pavilion w/ windows 7 (64 bit).

Hard drive was recognized by my HP Laptop w/ Windows Vista. Replaced it with Pavilion Desktop w/Windows 7 (64 bit).

Aldunn,
Have you been able to test any other devices in the ports on the desktop you are trying to using with Iomega? Example, have you tried using a regular usb flash drive or another external hard drive to see if the computer recognizes the device in the same port?
Please respond at your earliest convenience.
Thanks
Clicking the White Kudos star on the left is a way to say Thanks!
Clicking the 'Accept as Solution' button is a way to let others know which steps helped solve the problem!

Trouble with Lacie 1TB external hard disk

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/dev/sdb1 925G 200M 878G 1% /mnt/external_1
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thanks much.

lucke,
i know disks always have less capacity than the nominal size. but a 1TB disk should have more than 900 MB available. possibly as much as 980 MB. that would be commensurate with my past experience using other external drives. over 200 GB used off the bat is ridiculous, and i've never seen anything like that before.
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Imposible continue the installation of Snow leopard 10.6 on a 1TB external hard disk, what can I do?

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Hello Melophage,
It is the original hard drive which should have been erased by the previous owner. The problem is, I cannot access it without any OS installed. Or maybe there is a bootable USB or DVD that can do it ?
Just an indication: when I boot without CD inserted in it, it shows a grey folder icon with a questionmark like this one:
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PS: Yes, I am interested by the replacement pair of grey installation DVDs for my model. Where can I purchase this ?

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You need to get some software that allows your Mac to read and write to the NTFS disk. There's a whole bunch of stuff out there, but this program has a good review, and you can try it for free. I would move everything off of your external drive, reformat it into Mac OSX extended, and use it for your Mac. You don't need NTFS anymore, unless you still have a Windows computer that needs it.

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Since updating my Mac to 10.8.4 any external hard disk doesn't show on Finder sidebar (but shows on desktop). Anyone else have the same problem?

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Hi Barney-15E,
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It is set to show on the sidebar in Finder prefs and I tried toggling the setting multiple times but it didn't fix anything.
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I currently have a MAC Mini, which has 1 Firewire 800 port. I have a 1TB external hard disk that runs at Firewire 400. Can I insert another external hard drive that runs at Firewire 800?

Here's the deal. Currently running SL 10.6.8 on a MAC Mini. Planning for eventual upgrade to ML. Have a 1TB external hard drive partitioned into two volumes, one volume for Time Machine and one volume for SL which I periodically update using Superduper. Thus I always have a point-in-time bootable backup on the external hard drive.
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You may have overloaded the port, following the instructions below it should reset:
+1. Shut down the computer.+
+2. Disconnect all devices and all other cables, except the keyboard and mouse cable(s).+
+3. Disconnect the computer from the power outlet and wait for 3 to 5 minutes.+
+4. Plug the computer back in and turn it on.+
+5. Reconnect the device(s) (one at a time if there is more than one) and test. Test with each port if you have more than one.+
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1317?viewlocale=en_US

External hard disk not detecting

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repair disk just checks for errors
likely its a PC formatted HD, thats why you cant read it
Formatting ERASES a HD, so dont do that to the other persons HD.
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CANCEL problems

I see it's now working but make sure you are running the latest version of WD software.
http://community.wd.com/t5/News-Announcements/New-Release-WD-SmartWare-Version-1 -3-6-for-Mac-10-5-10-9-11-25/td-p/628441

External Hard disk not being detected.

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but no partition
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External hard-disk not working with firewire under Snow Leopard

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There's no problem with the drive.
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Menu bar items disappear, and external hard disks not mounting

Hi,
This problem started yesterday. I start up my Mac, and none of the menu bar items in the top-right of the screen show up. Then I noticed that none of my external hard disks had mounted.
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Tom

I've been having the same problem for a while (I believe since 10.5.3). I have reinstalled OSX, installed OSX 10.5.6 combo hoping that it would fix it, but nothing yet. I have the problem only when I insert an expresscard into the slot and restart. It connects to a PCI expansion chassis. When I restart with the ExpressCard installed, all menu items dissappear and I can't eject volumes (hard drives) from the desktop. If I restart without the ExpressCard in, the menu bars seem to work properly. I tried with an older G4 running 10.4.11, with a CardBus card and the same chassis, and that worked fine... all menu bar items displayed and worked properly and I could eject disks.
I have also tried creating new users, but that didn't work either.

External hard drive not showing up in finder

Hi,
I have a LaCie Rikiki USB 3.0 1TB external hard drive for more than a year or so (probably longer than that). The hard drive has 2 partitions with one formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) <named MAC> and the other MS-DOS (FAT) for windows <named as FOR WIN>.
The MAC volume has been working fine yesterday then suddenly it just started to transfer files very slowly and had problems unmounting when I am done transferring files saying it is in used by an application when it is not. So I had to force eject the the MAC volume while the FOR WIN volume ejected fine. However, here comes the problem.
Once I reconnected the external hard drive, it does show up in disk utility but not in finder. Also, the FOR WIN volume showed up as disk1s2 in disk utility. I tried using disk utility's verify and repair disk and couldn't fix the FOR WIN volume so I gave up on that since I don't have any important files in that volume. On the other hand, I could run verify and repair to get the MAC volume mounted. Through that I could get some files copied but soon finder hangs on me and wouldn't open even after relaunch which led me to disconnect the drive by just unplugging the USB. Now when I connect the drive, it again shows up in disk utility but not mounted and when I try to use the verify and repair all I get is:
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checking file system
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
Verify and Repair volume "MAC"
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Could anyone please help? Thank you!

tonydenson wrote:
That's great thanks. cmd-shift-c brings it back.
then it should also show up on the desktop. go to finder preferences->general and check the boxes to show external and CD drives.
Incidentally, I now have the opposite problem, I can't eject it. I get the message that the disk is in use, try quitting applications. I quite often get this with mounted drives or flash drives. Is there any way of finding out which particular application has a given device open ?
sometimes spotlight keeps drives busy.
you can see what's doing it by running the following terminal command
sudo lsof /volumes/lacie

WD 1TB ExternaL Hard Disk not seen on desktop/finder

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