General Mac hardware discussions forum: Can't locate WD external HD on my iMac desktop

Well, simply shutting down and unplugging did the trick...and keeping the firewire hookup...thanks Bob!!
Jamie-SpiritHawk

When a Firewire or USB device has been removed by dragging the icon to the trash, the FW or USB cable has to be physically unplugged and plugged back in again.
Both connections are hot swappable but both need to be ejected from the desktop correctly.
It's possible that when your Mac froze, the system saw the external drive as being ejected.
Unplugging and re-plugging did the trick.

As Bob advised, get that drive formatted as OS X HFS+(Journaled) as soon as possible.

If you are running 10.5, you can then use the drive as the Time Machine backup drive

P

1. Copy ALL data that you want to save, back on to the internal HD (ALL data currently on the external will be deleted during the next 9 steps!)
2. Open Disk Utility. (Found in the Applications > Utilities folder
3. Find your drive in the left hand column of Disk Utility.
4. Select it by SINGLE clicking on it.
5. Choose Partition from the Tabs in the Right Hand window. (RH window now changes)
6. In the dropdown menu, above the visual representation of the drive, choose 1 partition. (The dropdown probably says something like "Current" to begin with)
7. On the right of the RH window, you should see the word "Untitled" as the name of the drive. Change it to whatever your heart desires.
8. In the same area, you will see the format type choices. It probably defaulted to OS X Extended(journaled) or HFS+(Journaled) or similar. If it didn't, use the dropdown menu to choose that format.
9. Click the Apply button at the bottom left of the window. (It may say Partition or OK or something similar)
10. Let the Disk Utility do its thing. The drive will unmount from the desktop and then reappear using the name you gave it in step 7

That's it, you are done. The whole process, 1 through 10 should not take more than 10 minutes to complete.

Drives formatted as FAT are notoriously unstable and there is a distinct possiblity that you will wake up to an empty drive one day.
It is always best to format the drive for the Operating system you are using. NTFS for Windows and HFS+(Journaled) for Mac.

You may even find that all these instructions were in the box that this drive was shipped in. They are in the Seagate external drives.

Remember, ALL data, currently on the external drive, will be DELETED during this process.

Holler if you get stuck

P

Thanks for the wonderfully detailed instructions!!! It worked beautifully.

After the storm, does the hard drive actually turn on and make the "normal" noises or does it "click", rhythmically.

Is the power supply on that drive an external power brick or internal?

Does the drive appear in the Disk Utility?

Have you contacted WD about this problem? The drive is probably under warranty.

Shut down everything, including the computer. Connect everything as it should be. (use the firewire connection). Power up the drive. Once up and running, fire up the computer.
What happened?

P

When you shut down your Mac, it is NOT necessary to disconnect ANY of the devices first.
This includes the printer.

Just shut down your Mac and it will take care of the housekeeping for you.

Just leave the external HD running, you may find that it shuts itself down after a while.
Leave the printer running, it will go to standby after a while.

You can actually leave you Mac running 24/7, it won't harm it. It will go to sleep and shut down the Hard Drives when it is necessary.

To restart after you have shut down your computer. Just power it up as normal, ignore the external drive (assuming that you did not unplug it!!!), ditto the printer, and all will come back up again without a problem.

P