12-27-2007, 04:49 AM

Hi, I'm new to macs after spending many years fiddling with Windows and Linux in the IT industry, but I'm loving it so far - I bought an iMac 2 weeks ago and I'm very happy with it.

Anyway, I don't know if this is a bug or an intentional feature -

I went out and bought a 500Gb external HDD so that I could use Time Machine. Plugged it in, found and mounted it fine, Icon appears on the desktop for the mounted volume, I name it, Time Machine asked if I wanted to use that drive for backups so I chose yes. The icon changes from the standard Orange firewire icon to a Time Machine icon, it creates the initial backup and everything is fine.

This worked fine a couple of days, but now when I reboot or turn the ext HDD on, I get no icon on my desktop yet Time Machine still works fine, and it is still mounted in /Volumes and I can navigate using the terminal no problem?

Does the Time Machine icon hide itself delibrately, or has something screwed up? If the Time Machine drive does hide itself, why change it's Icon to a special Time Machine backup-drive icon?

12-27-2007, 04:58 AM

Open Finder preferences and check if you have enabled the option to show the external media on the desktop. If not, check the box, it will appear instantly.

12-27-2007, 05:32 AM

In Finder preferences I do have external media ticked and my USB pen drives appear fine

12-27-2007, 11:19 AM

During the first day of my time-machine usage I had a similar problem. Honestly I didnt feel like troubleshooting any more than you have so I simply reformatted the drive. No problems since. I wish that I could be of more help.

12-27-2007, 12:49 PM

Did you just reformat the Time Machine drive, then start over again with TM?

I don't mind doing that if it solves my problem, was just curious as to why it had happened, but I'm happy if I can get it working!

Perhaps it had something to do with me renaming the drive after selecting it to be used with Time Machine.