Connected Time Machine has disappeared?

[sultanoflondon]

Hi all,

I have an external HDD connected to my Mac that I use as the Time Machine backup drive.

As of late, whenever the drive is connected to the MacBook Pro, it doesn't show on the Desktop or in the Finder sidebar. This means that there is no direct method of me accessing the hard drive, but rather I have to go through Time Machine itself.

How can I remedy this? How can force the hard drive to reappear on the Desktop and the Finder sidebar?

P.S. as a result of not being able to access it, whenever I disconnect the drive, I am forced to just pull the cable from the MacBook Pro because I can't disconnect it on the Mac first.

 

[Honza1]

Check Disk Utility.app what the status of the TM disk is. If it shows as mounted (I suspect so), it is something with Finder settings. There are some settings which impact if disk is show on on desktop or not and if it is shown in left bar or not. You may need to delete Finder preferences if they happen to be corrupted.
If the TM disk is unmounted, then try to mount it from Disk Utilities. Some software packaged (Paragon NTFS, may be other) allow you to control if disk is automatically mounted or not. May be somehow this setting was changed?
I had issues with one of my TM disks recently - HS seems to run quick check on each disk before it is connected and if it fails, it does not mount it... This was failing. I could not use the disk successfully until I fixed the disk - I run First aid in Disk Utilities on it and in this case the disk could not be fixed and I had to wipe it and start new TM. TM disks can take forever to run First Aid on, especially if they are large. Make sure you have a lot of time available...

 

[AlteMac]

Your external disk may have failed.

 

[sultanoflondon]

Check Disk Utility.app what the status of the TM disk is. If it shows as mounted (I suspect so), it is something with Finder settings. There are some settings which impact if disk is show on on desktop or not and if it is shown in left bar or not. You may need to delete Finder preferences if they happen to be corrupted.
If the TM disk is unmounted, then try to mount it from Disk Utilities. Some software packaged (Paragon NTFS, may be other) allow you to control if disk is automatically mounted or not. May be somehow this setting was changed?
I had issues with one of my TM disks recently - HS seems to run quick check on each disk before it is connected and if it fails, it does not mount it... This was failing. I could not use the disk successfully until I fixed the disk - I run First aid in Disk Utilities on it and in this case the disk could not be fixed and I had to wipe it and start new TM. TM disks can take forever to run First Aid on, especially if they are large. Make sure you have a lot of time available...

I have checked and the drive is mounted. I think that my Finder preferences will be corrupted because I have gone through the Finder Preferences to toggle the display of hard drives but to no avail. What should I do now?
[doublepost=1517876659][/doublepost]

Your external disk may have failed.

it is still being backed up to, by Time Machine...

 

[Honza1]

I have checked and the drive is mounted. I think that my Finder preferences will be corrupted because I have gone through the Finder Preferences to toggle the display of hard drives but to no avail. What should I do now?

Google : Delete Finder preferences using Finder

You get this:

Delete Finder preferences using Finder

• Open a Finder window and navigate to Home > Library > Preferences folder.
• Trash the file com.apple.finder.plist.
• If you are using Mac OS X 10.3 or later, also trash the Finder Sidebar preferences file, com.apple.sidebarlists.plist.
• Perform one of the following tasks: ...
• Empty the Trash.

Finder issues? How to delete its preferences - The X Lab
www.thexlab.com/faqs/finder.html

 

[Cathal1961]

Hi all,

I have an external HDD connected to my Mac that I use as the Time Machine backup drive.

As of late, whenever the drive is connected to the MacBook Pro, it doesn't show on the Desktop or in the Finder sidebar. This means that there is no direct method of me accessing the hard drive, but rather I have to go through Time Machine itself.

How can I remedy this? How can force the hard drive to reappear on the Desktop and the Finder sidebar?

P.S. as a result of not being able to access it, whenever I disconnect the drive, I am forced to just pull the cable from the MacBook Pro because I can't disconnect it on the Mac first.

I had the same problem....sometimes finder can hide external connections. If you hover over locations on finder you will see an opportunity to show external connections. Hope this helps