shy external hard drive hides on me??

When ever I go to my computer after it has been on for a period of time my external hard drive is no longer on my desktop. I need to go to disk utility to mount it again. Does anyone know why it "dismounts" every time I go away from my Mac, and how to fix it? have I somehow insulted it?

Which hard drive do you have? Certain external hard drives have been known to go to sleep and will dismount. They have to be wakened before they'll mount and appear on the desktop.

I have a WD My Book Studio

I was thinking the same thing as chscag. The external HD is probably spinning down...and going to "sleep". Then after things have been idle for a while...it needs to be remounted (just as if the computer was shut off completely).

- Nick

is there any way to keep it awake?

chinookmt said:

is there any way to keep it awake?

Click to expand...

Go to System Preferences...and check the settings there.

But if this is an external HD that is USB powered (powered by the computers USB ports)...then when the computer goes to sleep...anything powered via the computers USB ports will go to sleep as well.

- Nick

The external drive is using a wall plug.

Check with Western Digital to see if there is a firmware update available for the drive. It really doesn't make any difference if it's AC powered or bus powered. Your Mac can still put it to sleep or the drive itself may be spinning down or timing out after a certain duration of non use.

Thank you I will check it out