Intel Mac :: External Harddrives Does Not Show Up On Desktop
Apr 16, 2012
My backup harddrive has suddeny disappeared from my desktop. It happened after I shut off which took loger than usual. I have also two other external harddrives, which are new formatted that does not show up.
I have three external harddrives all of which are connected through different ports, all show up in finder, all show up in disk utility, but none of them will show up on my desktop. I looked at a few other posts similar to mine but the answers given to other problems have not worked. There is no way all three of my cords are causing a connection problem and I have repaired and verifyd all the drives and still nothing.
My external drive has been used once. It was formatted, partitioned and files were saved on a mac. It showed up on a friends computer running Linux, and it showed up on my PC at home, but it hasn't been turned on since (about two weeks). This is where the problems begin. A few days ago I purchased a new enclosure for my HD (Nexstar 3.5). I took the HD out of it's old enclosure and put it in the new one (I needed the new enclosure for school purposes). I got to school today and plugged it in to the mac, but the drive didn't show up on the desktop. I tried to connect with Firewire 400, 800 and USB 2.0 but no luck with any of them (a USB key worked fine). Just to make sure it was working, I got home plugged it in to my PC and it showed up instantly.
From looking at other threads regarding this issue they all say I have to access the Utility menu. The only problem is since the mac I need to use is a school computer I can't access the Utility menu. It says I don't have authorization to use that menu, and won't allow me to go any further.
I don't know what to do from here. I can't reformat the drive because there is rather important info on there that hasn't been backed up yet. What can I do?
My external HD won't show up anymore on my desktop nor does it get listed in disc utilities. I tried to cennect it to another mac but it doesn't show there either nor in that mac's disc utility. I happened to re-start the computer while the hd was connected and now it doesn't show up anymore. I use it for back-up via Time machine. I could re-format and do the back up all over again but then I need to find it first.
i have tried going to the disk utilities and remounting my external drives and checked for an option in system prefs, but my external drives (both flash drive and hard drive) just won't show up on my desktop. My computer isn't even a week old!
My Maxtor 500 external hard drive has suddenly stopped appearing on my desktop. My other external drives appear. I've tried hooking the drive to my MacBook Pro with the same results. The drive however, seems 'active'. The light on the front of the drive does its usual flashing routine when plugged into a new machine. I've never had a crashed drive before. Does it sound like this is what has happened, or does anyone have a clue as to what I should do?
Disks I put in the Superdrive, external hard drives, or anything in the USB or Firewire (thumbdrive, etc) -- nothing shows up on the desktop. All are visible in Disk Utility. USB thumbdrives and external hard drives are visible in the sidebar in Finder, but disks are not (only disk utility).
Because of this I can't burn a disk because the disk is not being recognized. In Disk Utility, the external hard drives appear mounted and can be opened in Finder, but why aren't they appearing on my desktop (they used to)?
I have a broken screen on my MacBook air and have an external screen attached via thundbolt and hdmi connection when I boot up the unit it only shows second screen on external no dock or desktop so can not see system preferences or anything, need to find a way so then when I boot up system the external automatically comes the default screen
I use a Western Digital Passport as my external drive. When I link the USB I get no icon on my desktop and the device is not recognised unless I activate the WD Smartware to unlock it. That's not a lot of use when I want to download some files from a computer (like my wifes's) (also an iMac) which doesn't have the Smartware installed. why my desktop won't register the drive and why my wife's computer won't recognise the thing at all?
When i insert a flash drive I can find it in the sidebar on finder but would like it to show up on my desktop. Is there a setting that will allow this.
My desktop have suddenly decided NOT to show files, folders and disks. I can se those files via Finder but not directly on the desktop. I have repaired permissions, verified the disk and ofcourse checked my Finder preferenses - but no go. The desktop shows what I want it to show if I switch user.
I'm having trouble seeing an external firewire drive on the desktop.I've tried restarting with it on and then off, and turning it on after the boot is complete.I've reset the PRAM, still without success.The drive has a USB port which I tried, but when I connect via USB it still doesn't show up.If I leave the drive on whille connected via USB the computer does not boot, the screen remains a blank white.Outside of trying another firewire cable, are there any suggestions available that I can try?
I own a Macbook Pro 15' (early 2011) and my wife has a 17' MBP (Late 2011). She's about to go on an extended trip, and so we've talked about swapping laptops, as mine is a little more beat up already, is lighter and has a resolution that she prefers (1680 vs 1920). We've both got the high-end machines with upgraded GPUs (6750 and 6770).
To accomplish the swap, would it be possible and or advisable to simply swap harddrives between the machines? Are there any troubles that I might run into from doing this? We both have bootcamp partitions for gaming.
As the title states: How do I make external devices connected to my Mac appear on my desktop?
Cos the thing is that my Mac's hard drive got corrupted for whatever reason I don't know so I had to re-install my OS (Lion). Now the thing is that unlike before if I connected my phone, flash drive or wanted to install a new applicatiion it would appear on my desktop as an icon, now it doesn't.
I need more storage and need it to be quick and redundant
I'm concidering 2 of either the WD thunderbolt duo 6TB or the LaCie 2Big Thunderbolt 6TB. I want to set each 2disk unit to RAID 1 and then srtipe them as RAID0 accross thunderbolt to hopefully result in one striped and mirrored 6TB RAID volume
I'm hoping yes because i've seen 4 of the WB unit daisychained as one huge RAID0 but I'd like the redundancy. also i want the resultant volume in exFAT as I am constantly jumping between OSX and Win 7
Info: MacBook Pro (17-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
I've recently starting having problems with my external HD that I use for my Time Machine backups. I'm not able to repair the drive using Disk Elements, so I want to copy some of my backups stored therein onto my Mac HD before I try reformatting the external HD. However, I get the error message "The volume has the wrong case sensitivity for a backup" when I try dragging the backup folders onto my desktop. Is there any way to salvage the backups before I try reformatting?
Info: iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2011), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5), External HD: WD Elements 2TB
I have a Macbook Pro 2.16 Core Duo, and I'm wanting to install 10.6, but about a year ago, I cracked my screen to the point that I cannot make anything out on it, and haven't replaced it. Instead, I have just been using it in clamshell mode, which has worked out fine so far. My problem is that I cannot get the 10.6 install to show up on my external monitor.
I searched around, and could only find one other similar thread that just ended with the author putting it in clamshell and having it work fine. When I boot to the install and close the screen, I just get a grey box on my external display with a black bar on either side of it. I can't seem to find any other resources, so I'm not entirely sure what to do at this point. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
So, i bought a used macbook pro (2,2) 15inch 4gb ram, 320gb hd, and it is in GREAT condition, looks brand new. when i saw the laptop, i made sure everything worked, even the usb ports and all is fine.
when i came home, i formatted, and installed Snow Leopard, did ALL the updates before i did anything else. and i just noticed now when i plugged in my 1tb WD Passport it dosnt show up on the desktop, nor the disk utility, however the hard drive light turns on but when i put my hand on the laptop, it dosnt appear to be 'spinning' up.
i tried plugging in USB stick in both USB ports and it works, shows up just fine. so i dont think it could be the usb ports..
BUT when i plug the same external hard drive on my new i7 imac it shows up.yesterday, i plugged in the same drive into a friends Mac Pro, and had no problems. but i cant seem to figure this out.
when I put a blank cd in imac no icon is shown on desktop or itunes. It spins for a while then goes quiet. I have checked the system preferences saying - open itunes when insert a black cd.
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...
Anyone know if there is a way to put a show desktop item on the dock. I'm really lost without it, I hate having to minimize like 5 windows just to get to the desktop
I have a Mac OS X version 10.5.8, one of the 2008 black/white models. Yesterday, I was messing around with my computer because the hard drive will not show up in the finder (I already did the system preferences, doesn't work). However, I guess I must have deleted something because when I restarted my computer, the menu bar blinks in and out unless i get onto safari but I can't get into finder at all. Also, All of my items on my desk top are gone. And I can't get into Itunes (file locked, on a locked disk, or do not have written permission to enter it)
I'm assuming this means I need to take it in and get it fixed. But I wanted to see if I can do anything to avoid that because I am in college and have a paper every week so I pretty much live off of my computer.
Had to reinstall snow leopard & update to os 10.6.2; Now I insert a cd I had burnt before and it won't show on desktop to be able to open and get info. It all worked fine before reinstall. Tried several cd's that I know are good. Using a Macpro work station-10 gigs ram- Probably a simple solution but I can't seem to figure out.