[Resolved] How to Display Hard Drives on the Mac Desktop

Upon upgrading their Mac to Monterey, users often find themselves wondering why their hard disks are no longer visible on the desktop. Consequently, they become curious about how to display hard drives on their Mac.

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Undoubtedly, having easy access to the Mac HD database is immensely beneficial in various situations. You can readily explore numerous directories, such as systems, accounts, applications, and libraries. However, it might be the case that the Macintosh HD subdirectory is not visible on your screen or within the Finder due to configuration settings in macOS Ventura. This absence makes accessing files more difficult.

But the best part is that there are ways to display the hard drive on a Mac. This article will walk you through the process of doing that and locating an additional hard drive on your Mac.

Hard Drive Not Showing Up on Mac, Why?

There can be several reasons why your hard drive is not appearing on your Mac. Some of the most common causes include:

• File system fraud

It's also possible that the hard drive's file system is compromised due to bad sectors, logical errors, or similar issues. In certain cases, damage to the disk file system can prevent the HD from being recognized in the Finder.

• Preference Problem

You might not have configured the parameters to allow access to the hard drive on your Mac Terminal or display.

• Hard drive malfunction

Your drive might be severely damaged due to hardware failures, head crashes, or other factors.

1 - How to Display Hard Drive Icon on the Mac Desktop

The Finder is responsible for displaying the desktop and its icons, including the symbol for storage devices. You can easily show or hide your Mac's main hard drive from the screen by adjusting some Finder settings. If you want to keep your external hard drive icon visible on the screen for easy access to your files, follow these steps to display the HD icon on your Mac.

To begin, ensure that the "Finder" is in the foreground. Carefully check if the word "Finder" is displayed in your Mac's navigation area. If not, click on the "Finder" icon located in your Mac's Dock to bring it to the front.

Once you've achieved this, follow the instructions below to display the hard disk on a Mac workstation:

Step 1. Navigate to the Menu area and proceed to "Finder." Next, choose the "Settings" option.

Step 2. When the Finder settings box opens on your Mac computer, select the "General" tab.

Step 3. Then, under "Display these items on the desktop," select the "Hard disks" option.

Step 4. Lastly, the Mac hard drive icon should now appear on your screen, as shown below.

It's clear that showing or hiding Macintosh storage devices or hard drives on your screen is quite straightforward. If you need quick access to the information on your Mac, simply double-click the Mac HD icon from the taskbar, and it will take you to the location where all your Mac data is stored.

2 - How to Locate a Missing External Drive on a Mac

There could be several reasons why your hard disk, a removable disk, USB drive, or SSD is not showing up. It might have been formatted incorrectly, it could be corrupted, it could have a faulty (or inadequate) connection, or there could be another issue at play.

By following the steps outlined below, you should be able to locate and resolve the issue where your "external hard drive is not showing up on Mac", ensuring that your external disk becomes visible on your Mac.

Change your settings

Fortunately, there's a straightforward solution to installing the hard disk on your workstation. To make sure your Mac is set up to display installed files on the desktop, follow these steps:

Step 1. Launch the Browser.

Step 2. In the top selection on your computer, choose Finder.

Step 3. Choose Preferences from the Tools menu, and then select the General tab. Check the box next to External Devices.

Try Another Mac, Then a PC

If the aforementioned strategy fails, the next step is to connect the drive to another Mac. If it still doesn't mount there, you'll conclude that there's an issue with the drive itself; if it does mount successfully, the problem likely lies with your original Mac.

The very next step is to connect the disk to a computer. If the drive boots up on the PC, you've identified the problem: the disk is formatted for use with PCs and can't be recognized by your Mac.

3 - How to Locate HDD/External Hard Drive with Software

Have you recently considered the consequences if you were unable to access the data on your Mac hard drive due to a power outage or a malicious infection? If the aforementioned methods fail to resolve the "external hard drive not connecting to Mac" issue, data recovery tools can come to your aid in retrieving the lost data from your Mac's hard drive in such scenarios.

The Data Recovery Wizard for Mac tool will come to your aid in recovering lost data whenever the need arises. Even if you haven't created a backup of your device yet, this data recovery software can be immensely helpful. You now know how to partition and unpartition a Macintosh hard disk. However, it's equally important to understand how to retrieve lost or accidentally deleted files from the disk.

Using this professional tool, you can recover data from any storage media that is compatible with any macOS version. It retrieves files from:

• Every Mac version, including macOS Ventura data recovery and Monterey data recovery
• Both internal and external hard disks
• SSDs, fusion drives, Time Machine backup drives, and USB drives
• SD cards, memory cards, and cameras

It's distressing to lose data due to catastrophic events, often involving deletion without backups, formatting, malware infections, system failures, hardware malfunctions, unintended terminations, or human errors. Therefore, leverage data recovery software tools to address this problem: they can rectify various data loss scenarios and restore deleted folders swiftly.

Step 1. Search for missing files

Choose the disk location to search for lost files (this can be an internal HDD/SSD or an external hard drive) where you experienced data and file loss. Click the "Search for lost files" button.

Note: Before data recovery, it's recommended to click "Disk Backup" from the left sidebar to create a backup of your HDD/SSD to prevent further data loss. Once the backup is done, the software can restore data from the backup, and you can continue using the HDD or SSD.

Step 2. Review the scanning results

This software will immediately scan your selected disk volume and display pictures, documents, audio, videos, and emails on the left pane.

Step 3. Select the file(s) and recover 选择要恢复的文件(s)并进行恢复。

Click on the data to preview it, and then hit the "Recover" button to restore them.

Data isn't being stored, and there's no backup available? Don't worry. The Mac Data Recovery tool caters to over 500 file formats across all standard platforms. Download this professional macOS Data Recovery software right away!

Conclusion

It's evident that creating and deleting a Mac disk partition is relatively straightforward. However, caution should be exercised throughout the process. Data recovery software for Mac is always available to come to your rescue in case of an accident, ensuring you don't fall victim to unintentional deletion scenarios.

"Display Hard Drives on Mac FAQs"

Check out the following FAQs for a better understanding of the subject:

1. How do I display a hard drive on the Mac desktop?

Open Finder on your Mac and click on "Preferences." Under the "General" tab, select the items you wish to display on the screen. If you choose "Hard drives," for instance, icons representing your hard disks will appear on your screen. To choose what you want to see in the Finder window, click on "Sidebar."

2. How do I create a hard drive shortcut on my Mac desktop?

On your Computer, open the Finder and go to Finder > Preferences. In the General section, you can choose what items you want to display on the screen. Since the Desktop is a folder on a Mac, you cannot physically move this icon onto the desktop itself.

3. Why isn't my Mac detecting my hard drive?

The most common issue is that your disk needs to be correctly formatted. In this case, you will need to use Disk Utility to format the disk. Other possibilities include a faulty power source, a problematic connection, or your disk being corrupted or damaged.

4. How to access external hard drives on a Mac?

Whenever you connect an external HDD to your Mac's USB port, you might observe that it appears on the desktop. You can also locate it in the Finder, which can be found in the left-hand column under various locations.

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