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My Time Machine backups are kept on an external hard drive (LaCie Mobile Media Drive). That hard drive no longer appears in Finder so I cannot safely eject it before disconnecting it from the MacBook.
I see that in "Finder/Preferences/General/Show these items on the desktop:" all 4 of the items are checked. How can I bring it back to Finder?
MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 13.3
Let's check if the Mac can even see the device at all.
Hold the ⌥ option key and click on the menu then click System Information. Highlight USB under Hardware and on the right-side do you see the LaCie drive listed in the USB Device Tree?
If you do not see the device. Try moving the drive to a different USB-C port. Check the cable isn't loose. Perhaps you'll need to unplug the device and plug it back in. Most drives have some sort of activity light when they are active. Check if that light is on solid or blinking. See if you can hear or feel and vibration from the disk spinning.
If you do see the device in System Information under the USB Device Tree, then it is being detected but you aren't seeing it mounted in Finder. Open Disk Utility, do you see the disk listed there? It may be attached but not mounted, click the Mount button in Disk Utility to mount it.
You can also check System Settings -> General -> Time Machine and see if the disk is listed. Most of the time I find that Time Machines are hidden and don't show up on the Desktop, meaning macOS is able to mount them behind the scenes and run a backup. Time Machine disks are only writable by macOS. Users will only have read access to a Time Machine drive.
Let's check if the Mac can even see the device at all.
Hold the ⌥ option key and click on the menu then click System Information. Highlight USB under Hardware and on the right-side do you see the LaCie drive listed in the USB Device Tree?
If you do not see the device. Try moving the drive to a different USB-C port. Check the cable isn't loose. Perhaps you'll need to unplug the device and plug it back in. Most drives have some sort of activity light when they are active. Check if that light is on solid or blinking. See if you can hear or feel and vibration from the disk spinning.
If you do see the device in System Information under the USB Device Tree, then it is being detected but you aren't seeing it mounted in Finder. Open Disk Utility, do you see the disk listed there? It may be attached but not mounted, click the Mount button in Disk Utility to mount it.
You can also check System Settings -> General -> Time Machine and see if the disk is listed. Most of the time I find that Time Machines are hidden and don't show up on the Desktop, meaning macOS is able to mount them behind the scenes and run a backup. Time Machine disks are only writable by macOS. Users will only have read access to a Time Machine drive.
Perfect, as I suspected, the drive is hidden from the Desktop and Finder.
You should still be able to have it appear in the sidebar in Finder.
Finder -> Settings -> Sidebar
The LaCie drive is listed in the USB Device Tree.
It is listed in Disk Utility and mounted.
It is listed in System Settings -> General -> Time Machine so I assume that I will no longer see it in Finder although I do see that from Mission Control it does appear on "Desktop 2" so now I will start to safely eject it from there by right-clicking the icon and using 'Eject "LaCie"'
Thank you.
I have the same problem and followed your advise and mounted it.. However, while it did show up, it didn’t stay shown for very long. I am using it as an external time machine backup so your thoughts on time machine backup drives not showing may be correct. However, I partioned the 8TB external in half thinking I could use the other half for straight file copy storage and that side wouldn’t mount. So in addition to getting copious messages about removing the drive without first disconnecting it becomes a problem. Any further ideas?
Dave
Here is what I have selected:
external hard drive not appearing in Finder
