Missing Icon

[herzeleid]

Hi,
I've just joined your forum and I have a problem with my desktop, which I hope someone can help me with. I have a 500 GB external hard drive on which I keep an iPhoto and files back - up, but when I connected it today there was no icon appearing on my desktop ! I've been through all the procedures in Finder to try & restore the icon, but to no avail.
I checked my disk utility, which shows everything as OK, but still no icon. the hard drive is operating normally, as the LED is on, and you can hear the HD working, so I'm at a loss as to what to do.
If anyone has any advice on this I'd be most grateful.
I'm running an iMac OSX 10 . 8 . 5

 

[honestone]

What exact iMac model do you have?

Does that external drive have its own power connector?

How are you connecting that drive to your iMac? Maybe try another port.

 

[herzeleid]

The drive is connected using the USB cable which came with it. It was working fine up until yesterday. I've tried the cable with another drive and it works fine. I've tried restoring it via disk utility, which says everything is fine, just no desktop icon ! My Mac is an iMac 21.5 inch, with a 2.5Ghz processor, running OSX 10.8.5. I have 8 GB of memory, and it is 2.5GHz intel core 15.

 

[honestone]

With the other drive and the same cable, was it connected to the same port?

Also, how old is the "problematic" drive? And, do you either have another Mac you could try connecting to, or have a friend who has a Mac?

And, do you happen to have a more robust disk maintenance/repair program like Disk Warrior or TechTool Pro? If not, and if connecting it to another Mac still results with the same issue, then there is a good chance either the drive is bad, or some issues with the connector on the drive itself.

 

[herzeleid]

I tried the other drive with the same cable, and it worked just fine. I even moved it around different ports, but no joy. The drive is about two years old, so maybe it's given up the ghost. I'm not too bothered about the drive, but there are a lot of files I'd like to download from it, so how can I go about that ?

 

[honestone]

So just to make this clear: you tried the problematic drive, with the same cable, on all the available ports on your iMac, and got the same result? Seems strange, though, that is has gone bad after only 2 years. Did you buy it brand new, and what type of drive mechanism is inside (Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, etc.)?

As for getting stuff off of it, again if you can, try connecting it to another working Mac. But it seems more and more than either the drive is going bad, or there are issues with the connector on the drive? Does the drive have another USB port which you can try?

I don't know whether either Disk Warrior or TechTool pro will be able to "see" the drive. I have heard, though, that Disk Warrior can do wonders.

 

[herzeleid]

I tried the drive in the other ports, with no luck. I then used that cable on one of my other spare drives, and that worked fine. I bought the drive new,but I couldn't say what type of drive it is, as there's only the words " Serial ATA, high speed USB 2.0 " on the casing. Unfortunately it only has one USB port, so can't try an alternative.

 

[honestone]

Well, unfortunately without trying the drive connected to another machine, it is difficult to say what the exact issue is, and also for trying to recover any data from it. You could try and disassemble the case (usually can be done), remove the drive itself (you'll also see the exact brand/model of the drive), install it inside another inexpensive (but new) case, and try to connect it. Actually, if you are truly "daring", you could do the same disassembly of the good drive, enclose the problematic drive mechanism inside the good case, and try it. Yeah, that's a lot of work, but it's very difficult to tell what the issue is.

Again, seems real strange that the drive would go bad after only 2 years of use.

 

[herzeleid]

I'm going to try it on a friend's mac at the weekend and see what happens ! Many thanks for your help, and I'll let you know how I get on.

 

[honestone]

I'm going to try it on a friend's mac at the weekend and see what happens ! Many thanks for your help, and I'll let you know how I get on.

Hopefully, it will work. Then, you'll need to work on getting the data off of it (unless your friend has Disk Warrior or TechTool Pro, and thus could try and "repair" the drive). To get data off of it, you should bring your other, good drive with you, and then by connecting it to another port on your friend's Mac, you cab do a "simple" drag and drop of needed stuff from the problematic drive to the good one (assuming you have the space on the good drive).

 

[herzeleid]

Thanks for the info . . . I'll let you know how it goes.