External HD

Got a Samsung M3 Portable HD for my iMac. Plugged in to the mac and it worked OK. Could see it on the desktop.
Went away for a few days, Mac turned off, came back, turned mac on, now the drive is not shown on desktop or finder. Have looked at Samsung/seagate website for help but cannot find any. It is supposed to be mac comparable. Have tried it on my macbook air and it is not shown on there either. Any advice?

It is not going to be shown on the Desktop or in Finder unless you've gone into Finder - Preferences and made sure that the 'External Disks' is checked on both the General and Sidebar tabs.

The place to look to see if your computer recognizes the drive is Disk Utility - not Finder.

bobtomay said:

It is not going to be shown on the Desktop or in Finder unless you've gone into Finder - Preferences and made sure that the 'External Disks' is checked on both the General and Sidebar tabs.

The place to look to see if your computer recognizes the drive is Disk Utility - not Finder.

Click to expand...

Thanks for this but "External Disks' is checked as you advise. I doesn't show in Disk Utility either.
It is strange that I did use it to download some photos on to it, then now it doesn't appear anywhere.

The USB interface electronics on the drive may have failed. This is a common fault with some external hard drives. If the drive is no longer under warranty, you can try removing it from its case and either use an adapter or an external carrier case to see if the drive is operative. If it's under warranty, contact the manufacturer and ask for a RMA.