[G4] Invisible flash drive on G4

[Ronald Sweet]

Thank you to Diane, Kristen, Robert R.Rosenberg, Harry A. Freeman, and Wayne Wilkin for their suggestions and comments for solving the problem I reported on March 3. Unfortunately I still haven't been able to fix it.

Diane - the flash drive's icon does not appear when I open a new Finder window. The checkboxes to make Hard disks; CDs, DVDs, and iPods; and Connected servers show on the Desktop are all checked in the Finder's Preferences/General menu.

Kristen - I haven't come across the term Mystic desktop before, and I don't know whether my G4's desktop is one. But the flash disk icon does not appear on the desktop, whatever kind it is. The hard drive icon does appear in the upper right-hand corner. There are actually two internal hard drives in this G4, master and slave, and both icons appear as they should.

Robert - in Finder/Preferences/Sidebar menu, the hard disks checkbox is checked, as are all the others. The flash drive icon does not appear in the Finder's sidebar.

Harry - in the Finder/Preferences/General menu in the OS on my G4 (X 10.4.11), the top three checkboxes are for Hard disks; CDs, DVDs, and iPods; and Connected servers. There isn't one especially for External disks. I have assumed that "Hard disks" includes both internal and external.

Wayne - Yes, the flash disk is recognized in Disk Utility (as 2.0 GB Generic Flash Disk .../Flash Disk 1), and also in the Mac menu/About This Mac/More info .../Hardware/USB/USB High-Speed Bus, Mass Storage/Flash Disk 1. In Disk Utility, selecting Flash Disk 1 and running Verify Disk yields "Volume passed verification". But although Disk Utility and About This Mac recognize the flash drive, its icon does not appear on the desktop.

Yet when I plug the flash drive into a mid-2010 MacBook or a mid-2011 iMac, the icon appears. I don't understand the inconsistency.

Ronald Sweet


On 2012-03-03, at 7:02 PM, Ronald Sweet wrote:

> I have a Gigabit Ethernet Dual Processor 500 Mhz Power Mac G4 with 120 GB hard drive and a 5-port Belkin USB 2.0 card. OS X 10.4.11.
> 
> I also have a Staples Relay 2 GB Hi-Speed USB 2.0 flash drive, formatted Mac OS Journaled HFS+ (originally formatted FAT).
> 
> The flash card mounts as it should on an iMac11,2 and a MacBook2,1.
> 
> But its icon does not show up on the G4's desk top. Nonetheless, the G4's About This Mac/Hardware/USB recognizes it under USB High-Speed Bus/Mass Storage, and gives its Mount Point as /Volumes/Flash Disk 1. Disk Utility also recognizes it, this time as 2.0 GB Generic Flash Disk, Flash Disk 1, with its Mount Point again /Volumes/Flash Disk 1. But because no icon of the flash drive shows up on the desk top, I cannot open it to use it. Nor can I select the icon to drag it to the trash when I want to remove the flash drive. The Device Removal dialog box therefore comes up: "The device you removed was not properly put away. Data might have been lost or damaged. … " (none has been so far).
> 
> Can someone tell me what needs to be done to make this flash drive mount on the G4?
> 
> Ronald Sweet
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