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mounted filesystems no longer appear in Monterey finder window

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project_2501

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 1, 2017
676
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For as long as I can remember, mounted filesystems appeared on the left in any Finder window.

This includes mounted DMGs as well as physical USB connected external storage.

Since macOS Monterey 12.1 (maybe 12.0) they no longer appear in the usual place in Finder windows. They do appear on the desktop as icons.

How do I revert this behaviour change?

67d7fc14-966e-401e-b1ab-151ecd22ded8.png
 
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Not a "behavior change", per se, and you should be able to see any mounted drives in the sidebar of your finder window.
Go to Finder menu, choose Preferences. Click on "Sidebar". Click on the box next to either Hard disks, or External disks, until you see a √ in the box. Any mounted storage volumes should appear in a Finder window sidebar immediately.
If you don't see a sidebar at all, go the View menu, and click "Show Sidebar"
If you still don't see your mounted drives, move your mouse across the sidebar to Locations, and click Show (should appear when your cursor is on the "Locations" line.
 
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Same issue here since upgrading to Monterey a few days ago. My external hard drive mounts and is usable, but no longer appears in the Finder sidebar (all the appropriate boxes are checked in Finder preferences). It does still appear as an icon on the desktop, however. Minor issue, but annoying.
 
If you have an icon for a mounted volume on your desktop, drag that icon to the "Locations" section of the sidebar in a finder window.
 
Your image in your post #1 shows a Disk Utility window... That is not a finder window.
Is that where you want your drive to appear?

If you click on the View menu in that DU window, then choose "Show all Devices", does your desired drive then appear in the DU window?
 
DeltaMac said:
Your image in your post #1 shows a Disk Utility window... That is not a finder window.
Is that where you want your drive to appear?

If you click on the View menu in that DU window, then choose "Show all Devices", does your desired drive then appear in the DU window?
Click to expand...
I'm not the OP, that's not my image. I agree that his image doesn't match the text of his post. I was just chiming in that I have the same issue in Finder that he describes, based on what he wrote. By the way, my external drive does show up in DU, the only place it doesn't seem to appear is the Finder sidebar.
 
hmm... Try this:
Control-click on the folder name in the titlebar. You will get a dropdown for the path to the folder.
Choose the bottom-most item, which is your computer name.
You now should see all mounted drives in the finder window.
Drag the drive that you need from your finder window to the sidebar/Locations, and drop it there.
Does THAT work?
 
DeltaMac said:
hmm... Try this:
Control-click on the folder name in the titlebar. You will get a dropdown for the path to the folder.
Choose the bottom-most item, which is your computer name.
You now should see all mounted drives in the finder window.
Drag the drive that you need from your finder window to the sidebar/Locations, and drop it there.
Does THAT work?
Click to expand...
No, that didn't work either.

For now I'm just leaving the drive icon on the desktop (something I don't usually do).
 
When you say "that didn't work", what DOES happen when you drag the drive icon to your finder window sidebar, to the Locations area?
Are there OTHER drive icons in your sidebar?
What happens when you drag a different drive icon out of the sidebar? Can you then return that icon to your sidebar?
Do you ever get an error message when you try moving any icon to the sidebar?

If you mouse across the locations area, you should see "hide". Click that. All location items will hide. Then the word hide should then be "show". Click that. Your drive icons will reappear in that Locations section.
Does that happen?
 
When I try and drag the drive there, it looks like it's being dragged and the cursor highlights a spot on the Location section of the sidebar, but when I drop it there, nothing appears. There is no error message.

Right now the only items in that section of the sidebar are my MacBook Pro and Network. I just tried opening a dmg file and that did appear in the sidebar as well. Also tried a thumb drive and that appeared as well. Seems to be specific to my backup drive. Hiding and showing the list changes nothing.
 
So, the drive icon is a normal mounted icon, and not an alias, correct?
The drive shows up as normal in your Disk Utility?

Can you place (and drop) the icon in the Favorites section, rather than the Locations section of your sidebar?
 
Yes, it shows up as a normal mounted icon and it shows up in DU.

I was able to successfully drag it to the Favorites section of the sidebar.

When I highlighted the drive in the Favorites section I could see the contents in the Finder window as you'd expect. Interestingly, I then tried to drag it from Favorites to Locations and the drive disappears completely from the sidebar, BUT I can still see the contents of the drive in the Finder window.

Whatever the cause, having the drive in the Favorites section is sufficient. Thank you.
 
Does your drive icon have a small arrow on the bottom left corner?

I'm more curious now....
Click on your drive icon, and press Command + i
That should show your Info window. What is showing for "Kind:" ?
Volume? Or something else?
 
Well,,, OK
Not what I was guessing.
Probably some random problem with a system cache file somewhere.
I don't really have more help on that -- but at least you can put that drive in the sidebar Favorites, just not in the same section as your other drives. (You CAN drag all of your other drives into the Favorites, too, maybe that will be a work-around for you )
 
DeltaMac said:
Well,,, OK
Not what I was guessing.
Probably some random problem with a system cache file somewhere.
I don't really have more help on that -- but at least you can put that drive in the sidebar Favorites, just not in the same section as your other drives. (You CAN drag all of your other drives into the Favorites, too, maybe that will be a work-around for you )
Click to expand...
Thanks for your help. I don't have any other drives that I use regularly, so it doesn't really matter.
 
Sital said:
When I try and drag the drive there, it looks like it's being dragged and the cursor highlights a spot on the Location section of the sidebar, but when I drop it there, nothing appears. There is no error message.

Right now the only items in that section of the sidebar are my MacBook Pro and Network. I just tried opening a dmg file and that did appear in the sidebar as well. Also tried a thumb drive and that appeared as well. Seems to be specific to my backup drive. Hiding and showing the list changes nothing.
Click to expand...
It sounds like it’s because Monterey has marked your external backup drive as a Data Volume, which is hidden by the OS. It can’t be changed.

I posted some info about it here https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/monterey-carbon-copy-cloner-users-thread.2302964/post-30557978
 
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steve62388 said:
It’s sounds like it’s because Monterey has marked your external backup drive as a Data Volume, which is hidden by the OS. It can’t be changed.

I posted some info about it here https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/monterey-carbon-copy-cloner-users-thread.2302964/post-30557978
Click to expand...
Interesting. My drive is marked as an APFS Data Volume, so I guess that explains it. As I posted above, while it doesn't appear in the Locations section of the Finder sidebar, it does appear in the Favorites section which is good enough for me. Thanks for the explanation.
 
Besides not showing in Finder "Sidebar - Locations", another consequence of backup disks not containing macOS but only data is that they cannot be added to "Apple - System Preferences - Spotlight - Privacy" in macOS 12.6.3 (21G419) Monterey (and earlier), generating the error: "Privacy List Error. The item couldn't be added or removed because of an unknown error".
 
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