can't see my External HardDrive

[UnitedRed]

I was trying to play around with the preferences of my other HD to try and stop access to it from the other user account i've set up on my computer. I may have done something a bit stupid

But now my admin account can't see it either, the icon has gone from the desktop and I can't seem to find it through the finder. Its like that in both accounts

Is there anyway to get it back on my main account (admin) but to hide it on the new user's one?

Also I run silverkeeper to keep regular backups, will this still go ahead even though I can't get access to it?

I've tried searching in spotlight for Iomega but it didn't work


Also just one more thing, i've recently installed the new firefox and one thing i've noticed is before I used to hold the left mouse button and it would bring up the options like open in a new tab etc, now nothing happens. How do I change my settings so that holding the button works as a right click

Thanks

 

[mklos]

Does the external HD appear in Disk Utility? If its going to appear, it will show in the left hand column and probably have an orange hard drive icon.

Does it appear in the sidebar in a Finder window?

When in Finder, click on the Finder Window, and then select Preferences. Under the general section, see if anything is unchecked there besides Computer. Everything else should be checked by default.

What I do for my guest account is setup the Dock and everything else just the way you want it. Then, in the Finder, go to the Preferences like you just did above and uncheck all of the drives and they will no longer show on the desktop. Also while in Preferences, click on the sidebar section and uncheck the hard disk box, and also CD/DVD/iPod as well. Then even if they launch a finder window the hard disks won't appear. As far as I know, there's no easy way of making the external HD now show up without not making other things not show up as well. So you'll need to compromise a little I guess.

 

[UnitedRed]

yeah it does show in Disk Utility but I don't know what to do in that.
The finder windows only shows Macintosh HD, the preferences is shown above and everything is ticked.

I'll try and change the preferences like you said for the other user account

 

[mklos]

I'm a little worried that the icon indented under your orange drive has a piece of paper as the icon instead of another orange icon. If you click ONCE on the indented icon under the orange icon, above on the toolbar does Mount appear, or Unmount? If Mount appears, click that and see if it mounts on the desktop.

 

[UnitedRed]

It says Unmount

 

[mklos]

I would try creating a new account and then log into it and see if it appears.

 

[UnitedRed]

thanks but I tried that and it didn't work

Also silverkeeper didn't update either, it said something about mounting it, Which means I can't backup my files

is there anything else I can try, maybe in Disk Utilities?

 

[janitorC7]

try seeing if you can see in from terminal, I cant remember how to do this off hand, but I know its possible

 

[UnitedRed]

i'll try it but haven't a clue about using Terminal

 

[UnitedRed]

can anyone help me on how to get things back to normal?

from the desktop I clicked Get Info, what ownerships and permissions should be in place. Hopefully this might fix the problem

at the minute i'm trying to play around with them and see what works, but some folders aren't allowing access anymore

this is what i've got...
1st box - Read & Write
Details:
Owner - my username
Access - Read & Write
Group - Admin
Access - Read & Write
Others - Read & Write

if someone can say what they are meant to be on I might be getting somewhere

thanks

 

[mklos]

i'll try it but haven't a clue about using Terminal

Here's what to do:

1. Make sure your ext HD is turned on and plugged in (check to see if it appears in the Disk Utility even though you may not be able to open it)

2. Launch Terminal (Applications/Utilities)

3. Type this in:

cd /Volumes (press return) (Make sure Volumes starts with a capital V...UNIX is case sensitive)

4. Type in:

ls -l (Press Return) (the l is an L in lowercase...make sure its lowercase there)

That will display the connected volumes such as your hard drive, iPod, any CD/DVD's that are in your optical drive, FW/USB Drives that are plugged in and turned on.

5. Get the name of your ext hd (looks like it says Iomega HD from the pic you attached earlier) and then type in:

cd "Iomega HD" (Press Return)

If there's a space in the name you need to put quotes around it or else the UNIX shell will only pick up Iomega and leave out the HD part. Also type it in exactly as its written in step 4. Remember UNIX is case sensitive.

6. Type in:

ls -l (again the l is a L in lowercase...make sure its lowercase)

Hopefully the ls -l will display whats in there. If it comes back with an error or something its probably because it couldn't read what was on the drive.

From there you can maybe see what's in side it. Let us know if you have any problems...

 

[UnitedRed]

i'm still no further on
i've tried unplugging it, pulling the wires out but still nothing

all I need to get to is the display options for it then I can't change the permissions I think.

Should I just install it all again?
Not sure how I would uninstall it first though

 

[UnitedRed]

anyone please?

 

[Mechcozmo]

cd /Volumes (press return) (Make sure Volumes starts with a capital V...UNIX is case sensitive)

UNIX is actually a confusing mix between case-sensitive and case-insensitive. Switches are case-sensitive, but the filesystem isn't. (It does preserve case)

Anywhoo,
Is there another Mac you can try the hard drive on? Or an Apple Store nearby that you can try it out there?

 

[UnitedRed]

no theres no apple store anywhere near me
the HD is still working but I can't get access to it since I created a new account and tried making it so the new account couldn't get access to it, i've deleted the account since then

 

[Compile 'em all]

Type mount in Terminal and copy/paste the result here.

 

[UnitedRed]

i've edited out my name but here is what I got

 

[Compile 'em all]

Looks mounted to me. Could you cd to /volumes and type ls -la. Copy/paste the result here.

 

[UnitedRed]

 

[Mechcozmo]

Looks like you don't have any privileges on that drive.

Can any of the other UNIX-gurus tell me if this will work? (I think it will give full permissions to the drive, but I'm not sure)
"chmod 777 /Volumes/Iomega HDD"

 

[Compile 'em all]

Mechcozmo, this is exactly what I was trying to see, permissions . And Yes. chmod 777 should give the owner, group, and others read/write/excute permissions on the drive. I am not sure if he will need to use sudo to excute the chmod.


UnitedRed, if the chmod command mentioned above doesn't work try sudo chmod 777 /Volumes/Iomega HDD.

 

[UnitedRed]

thanks
do I type them in the Terminal, and with or without the " "?

 

[Compile 'em all]

Yes, in the Terminal and without the quotes. You can always hit tab to autocomplete when typing-in commands. For example, you can type cd /Vol then hit tab and it will be completed to /Volumes.

 

[UnitedRed]

I copied both posts as they were
tried the first one but nothing happened
the second one asked for a password, I put it in and got this message


chmod: /Volumes/Iomega: No such file or directory
chmod: HDD: No such file or directory

 

[UnitedRed]

I just turned on my mac and the icon is back where it belongs, it must have needed the restart.
So thanks very much for the help guys