Why won't my external hard drive appear in Finder?

I have an Iomega 320GB SPHDU external hard drive which I was using as my backup disk for Time Machine and also to store other files (documents, photos, etc.). I have been using for some time now and never had any problems, however this morning, I plugged the hard drive into my MacBook Pro, which is from early 2011 and on operating system OS X 10.9.4, using the USB ports and the hard drive did not appear in Finder. I checked to see if it had appeared in Disk Utility which it does, but Disk Utility is telling me that the hard drive needs repairing. When I try to repair the hard drive, I get the message 'Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed up files.' As I said I have never had any problems with it before, but this has just occurred this morning and I'm unsure why it has happened.

Because there's a problem with the disk's directory structure; these are often the result of improperly unplugging drives or forcing a computer to shut down. Proceed as instructed, or try using a more powerful utility such as DiskWarrior to repair it.
(111975)

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Why won't my external hard drive show up anywhere? Something wrong abt NTFS.

Why won't my external hard drive show up anywhere? Something wrong abt NTFS. After my OS turn to OS X Lion, this problem occur. I couldn't solve it, anybody?

It doesn't make sense.
Anyway, I found the solutions. Download software for solving this problem.
Here is the link:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24481/ntfs-3g

My new external hard drive appears in Finder, but none of the files show up in recent documents (today/yesterday/past week)

My new external hard drive appears in Finder, but none of the files stored on it show up in recent documents (today/yesterday/past week).

what format is the external drive? How is it connected?
The drive must be formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) - if it is try Back up your iPhoto library, Depress and hold the option (alt) and command keys and launch iPhoto - from the resulting first aid window repair permissions and if necessary rebuild your database
Note that multiple libraries is not necessary and is generally a bad idea.
LN

Why won't my external hard drive open

So I downloaded mavericks when it came out and now one of my external hard drives will not open but disk utility Will recognize the hard drive but I cannot access the lights on the hard drive work you can feel it spinning but it just won't access I've tried everything I know the hard drive fine why won't my Mac read my drive?

Please read this whole message before doing anything.
This procedure is a diagnostic test. It’s unlikely to solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
The purpose of the test is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party software that loads automatically at startup or login, by a peripheral device, by a font conflict, or by corruption of the file system or of certain system caches.
Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards, if applicable. Start up in safe mode and log in to the account with the problem. You must hold down the shift key twice: once when you turn on the computer, and again when you log in.
Note: If FileVault is enabled, or if a firmware password is set, or if the startup volume is a software RAID, you can’t do this. Ask for further instructions.
Safe mode is much slower to start up and run than normal, with limited graphics performance, and some things won’t work at all, including sound output and Wi-Fi on certain models. The next normal startup may also be somewhat slow.
The login screen appears even if you usually login automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
Test while in safe mode. Same problem?
After testing, restart as usual (not in safe mode) and verify that you still have the problem. Post the results of the test.

Why won't my external hard drive connect to my mac anymore

I have a 1 Terabyte external HD that I use for my timemachine back ups. I eject it whenever I need to use my laptop away from my desk and re-connect it so it will do an automatic back up. the other day, it would not eject at ALL, so I ended up having to shutdown my laptop and disconnect it. Later, when I went to reconnect it to the laptop, my Mac doesn't recognize it. I have rebooted the laptop and the external hard drive multiple times, but when I plug the HD into the laptop, the Mac still doesn't "sense" it. I can't do any backups at the moment.

From reading similar threads, and from my own experiences, the prevailing wisdom seems to be that:
* the drive must be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journal), not FAT32, NTFS or other
* the drive must not be currently used as a time machine disk
* (theory) the drive must not have previously been used a time machine disk
From my own experiences, I had 3 externals that worked w/ iMovie 11 but not w/ FCP X. With some experimentation, I was able to confirm the above items.
- one drive was a TM disk, and just wasn't ever going to work. Annoying, but at least an identified issue (or bug)
- one drive was once a TM disk but I'd stopped using it as such. I'd manually deleted the backups on it, but suspect that TM likely leaves invisble files around to identify meta on file lists, exclusions, etc. Showing invisibles in finder listed a plethora of files that I wasn't willing to research. Went into disk utility, formatted as Extended Journaled, and the disk started to appear in project and event windows in FCP X.
- one drive was formatted as NTFS. I use Tuxera to read/write NTFS and this seemingly caused no problems in iMovie. With numerous threads discussing FAT32/NTFS incompatability, I opted to format this disk and then restore my old iMovie events and projects. Again, this resulted in the drive being visible in FCP X.
One note, as mentioned above, in the case of the disk wehere I restored old iMovie events/projects, the disk didn't immediately show in the events window (but did show projects immediately). The solution was to insure that the events window was grouping events by disk. The default layout hid away my external disk until I did this--and once grouped properly, I was able to then import my iMovie events into FCP X successfully.
Good luck...the support for exernal drives (and likely NAS) seems really poorly documented. I lost at least two days to this.

Why won't my external hard drive mount?

Hi
I am having problems getting my new iMac to recognise an external hard drive. It is a 40gb Western Digital hard drive that I copied over photos and music from my old computer (not an Apple) on. When I plug it in to the USD port it recognises the hard drive but then drops it after about 2 minutes and then it won't recognise it again until I restart the computer at which point it recognises it again for 2 minutes.
The hard drive work's fine on my Thinkpad and my Dell desktop.
Can anyone help?
Thanks.

It doesn't make sense.
Anyway, I found the solutions. Download software for solving this problem.
Here is the link:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24481/ntfs-3g

Why won't my external hard drive show up in the hard drive list in final cut pro x?

I can't figure out how to get my external hard drive to show up in the list of available drives in final cut pro x. It works just fine in iMovie 11 and every where else on my MacBook pro. The external hard drive I am trying to get to appear is an iomega 1 TB hard drive. Please help as I have a ton of footage on it and don't have the room to move it to my internal drive on the MacBook.

I have the same problem with internal drives. Only the one with the largest free space shows up. The others ”blink” in the Event viewer, and then disappear. Sounds like a bug...
Regards,
Rabbe

Why won't my external hard drive show up in the hard drive list in final cut pro 8?

I can't figure out how to get my external hard drive to show up in the list of available drives in final cut pro x. It works just fine in iMovie 11 and every where else on my MacBook pro. The external hard drive I am trying to get to appear is an iomega 1 TB hard drive. Please help as I have a ton of footage on it and don't have the room to move it to my internal drive on the MacBook.

From reading similar threads, and from my own experiences, the prevailing wisdom seems to be that:
* the drive must be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journal), not FAT32, NTFS or other
* the drive must not be currently used as a time machine disk
* (theory) the drive must not have previously been used a time machine disk
From my own experiences, I had 3 externals that worked w/ iMovie 11 but not w/ FCP X. With some experimentation, I was able to confirm the above items.
- one drive was a TM disk, and just wasn't ever going to work. Annoying, but at least an identified issue (or bug)
- one drive was once a TM disk but I'd stopped using it as such. I'd manually deleted the backups on it, but suspect that TM likely leaves invisble files around to identify meta on file lists, exclusions, etc. Showing invisibles in finder listed a plethora of files that I wasn't willing to research. Went into disk utility, formatted as Extended Journaled, and the disk started to appear in project and event windows in FCP X.
- one drive was formatted as NTFS. I use Tuxera to read/write NTFS and this seemingly caused no problems in iMovie. With numerous threads discussing FAT32/NTFS incompatability, I opted to format this disk and then restore my old iMovie events and projects. Again, this resulted in the drive being visible in FCP X.
One note, as mentioned above, in the case of the disk wehere I restored old iMovie events/projects, the disk didn't immediately show in the events window (but did show projects immediately). The solution was to insure that the events window was grouping events by disk. The default layout hid away my external disk until I did this--and once grouped properly, I was able to then import my iMovie events into FCP X successfully.
Good luck...the support for exernal drives (and likely NAS) seems really poorly documented. I lost at least two days to this.

Why won't my external hard drive mount in Disk Utility even when it shows up on the list?

Hey all,
For the last few years I've used a Samsung S2 1TB external harddrive to back up all my files, this includes photos, music and a vast amount of resources required for Uni. However I plugged it in for the first time in about two months and discovered that neither my Macbook Pro (late 2011) or my Mac Mini (early 2013) are able to mount the hard drive.
It shows up in Disk Utilty however the harddrive is greyed out and when I manually try to mount it I get an error message saying that it can't be mounted and to use the first aid 'Repair disk permissions' feature which would be all good and well were that not also greyed out.
I've read a fair amount on this forum that suggest that Mavericks has caused quite an issue with harddrives and although I don't know for sure, the harddrive did stop working at a very similar time to when I updated. I've sinced used the basic version of 'Disk Drill' on the harddrive and all the files show up perfectly which leads me to believe that perhaps the issue isn't with the harddrive itself but perhaps a compatibility issue.
I was just wondering whether anyone had any advice or had suffered a similiar issue, preferably in relation to the Samsung S2 harddrive. The partition type is a Windows_FAT_32 and it's a USB hard drive.
Thanks in advance!

Because there's a problem with the disk's directory structure; these are often the result of improperly unplugging drives or forcing a computer to shut down. Proceed as instructed, or try using a more powerful utility such as DiskWarrior to repair it.
(111975)

Why won't my external hard drive show up in iMovie 11?

My external USB drive - formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) shows up fine on my desktop, and worked fine with iMovie in the past. Now, it won't show up in the event library, or in the "Save to:" menu when I try to import video. I can see my iMovie projects and events on the drive in Finder, but iMovie just doesn't recognize the drive. Argh!!! Any ideas?? Thanks in advance!

Luyen wrote:
Ignore ownership? Yep, it's checked.
although some say it's plain voodoo, but try the Disk Utilitys 'repair permissions' command
You'll find the DU in your applications/utilities Folder ........

Why do my two external hard drives require "ejection" prior to shutdown?

Why do my two external hard drives require "ejection" upon shutdown?

Problem solved. I had plugged in my external hard drives into a USB card. I switched my two printers to the USB card and plugged in the two hard drives into the computer's USB outlets and now NO improper eject messages. What a relief!!! Thanks again.

Internal & external hard drives disappeared in Finder

It happened yesterday on my G5 running 10.4.6. I have 2 hard drives inside my G5 and one external hard drive connected with firewire 800. The second hard drive and the external hard drive disappeared in Finder. But the one that has the system on it is fine. They did show up in Disk Utility. But it said they are both "not mounted".
When I tried to repair them in disk utility, it said:
"Checking HFS Plus volume.
Invalid B-tree node size
Volume check failed.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error"
Does anyone know how to fix it? I have lots of stuff in those hard drives.
Thanks
Ti Powerbook G4 1Ghz, PowerMac G5 Dual-Core 2.3 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Sounds like you have a major problem that Disk Utility cannot fix. This has happened before to other users. I suggest you get a copy of DiskWarrior and that will probably fix it. You can read about/buy it here:
Alsoft DiskWarrior
Mulder

Since I downloaded Maverick, I cannot find my External Hard Drive in the "Finder" area. I have to unplug all the time the hard drive to be recognized by my iMac. How can I fix this problem? Thank You.

Since I downloaded Maverick, I cannot find my External Hard Drive in the "Finder" area. I have to unplug all the time the hard drive to be recognized by my iMac. How can I fix this problem? Thank You.

Check Finderr->Preferences->General and ensure that HDs are selected for display. If so and they still don't, Reset the NVRAM/PRAM and Reset the SMC, and see if that does the trick.

In which folder of my Seagate 3TB external hard drive, can I find my iPhoto photos from my iMac (iOS X Maverick)?

In which folder of my Seagate 3TB external hard drive, can I find my iPhoto photos from my iMac (iOS X Maverick)?

tlah wrote:
The Seagate 3TB external hard drive backs up the entire internal hard drive of the iMac.
Is this external drive a Time Machine backup?
Then find what you want using Time Machine (or whatever application you used to make the backup).
Your iPhoto pictures are in the iPhoto library in Users/Pictures.

Why do files on an external hard drive appear as alias when connected to Time Capsual's USB?

Situation:
I have an old MacBook Pro (2008) and all of its USB and CD ports have stopped working (only the Ethernet port works). As a workaround, I purchased a 2TB Time Capsule, connected it via Ethernet to the MacBook Pro, and set up a wireless network that my MacBook Air (2010), ipads/pods, can connect.
Attempting to Accomplish:
1. Provide a back-up for my Pro since I cannot connect via USB
2. Move photos off my Air (to free up space) and combine with my Pro's library
3. Share files, music, and photos between all my devices (stored on both my Pro, Time Capsule, and external Maxtor hard drive)
Problem:
My last Pro back-up was to a Maxtor external hard drive. Also, all my Air photos are on the same external hard drive. I connected this hardrive to the Time Capsule. When I accessed the Maxtor from the Pro (through my new airport network) I can see the file hirearchy, but when I drill down to my Air's iPhoto library (back-up, latest, user, x, photos) the files appear with the alias symbol on them. The message I get when clicking is something about them being no longer connected. HOWEVER, when I attach this Maxtor via direct USB to my Air, both the Air backups and the Pro back ups appear as real files (no alias icon) and can be opened and transferred. When my Pro's ports worked I frequently shared files this way with no alias icons.
Disclaimer: I'm mac-savy enough that the genius bar is adding no real value/help, but not nearly as technical as most people on this board. And I'm very un-technical with networking. So if you can point me in the right direction, please "speak" simply =)

Ok, confirmed. It is NTFS and according to the permissions I can only read it. The frustrating thing is that it says:
    - Capacity: 74.53 GB
    - Available: 50.35 GB
    - Used: 24.18 GB on disk
and yet at the bottom of the file list it shows "0 items"
Now the dilemma. The harddrive on my Windows laptop is very small (30GB) so I cannot copy all of my pictures to it. I could hook the old harddrive and the new harddrive up to it at the same time and move them from old to new, however...
The new harddrive is supposed to only be for the Mac so my intention was to format it that way. Because I am not sure if/how I am going to need it to resolve this issue, the box hasn't even been opened...so the first question is long term would it be better to have the new harddrive MAC or FAT32 formatted?
I have been assuming that Mac formatting was the preferred route so I am still brainstorming on ways to get the files straight from the old harddrive to the Mac. Could it just be a matter of the files being hidden on the old harddrive? How do I unhide them?

Why won't my external hard drive appear in Finder?

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