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How To Fix An External Hard Drive Not Appearing In Mac Finder?

My Time Machine backups are kept on an external hard drive (LaCie Mobile Media Drive). That hard drive no longer appears in Finder so I cannot safely eject it before disconnecting it from the MacBook. I see that in "Finder/Preferences/General/Show these items on the desktop:" all 4 of the items are checked. How can I bring it back to Finder?

Best Answered by

iBoysoft author Vain Rowe

Vain Rowe

Answered on Wednesday, November 26, 2025

You can hold the ⌥ option key, click on the  menu, and then click System Information.  Highlight the USB under Hardware and on the right side to see if the LaCie drive is listed in the USB Device Tree. If it does, then the time machine backup drive works fine. You can drag the drive icon on the Mac desktop to Mac Trash, then unplug the drive. Note the unplug will discontinue the Time Machine backup job.

If the Time Machine backup drive is not listed in the USB Device Tree, I guess you need to perform some solutions to make the drive functional again. Please read this article for detailed solutions: Fix External Hard Drive Not Showing up or Recognized on Mac

 

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