external hard drive not showing up on desktop

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I got a dialog box from Time Machine today saying that it has not backed up in 10 days. I noticed that my LaCie external hard drive is not showing up on the desktop. It's connected, light is on, and I have checked the cables and connections and all are good. I cannot turn on Time Machine. It's asking me to browse other backup disks. When I click on that option, a box comes up with no disks available to use with Time Machine. I have no idea what is going on, because it was working fine up to 10 days ago. I know the external disk is probably full, or almost full, because I was getting messages that Time Machine was adding new backups and deleting the oldest backups. Worked fine like that for months. All of a sudden, there's no backups.
 
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You will need to clean off unnecessary files from the LaCie drive. But, you will need to first analyze and repair the disk.

First of all, is the LaCie drive connected directly to one of your USB ports on your Mac? If it is connected to a USB "hub", try connecting it to a USB port.

Secondly, you can try and use Disk Utility to repair the drive. What you need to do is launch Disk Utility, and select the LaCie drive (assuming its' icon is there). Once you do that, click on Verify Disk. Hopefully, it will tell you that there are some issues with the disk. With that, click Repair Disk. You might need to run Repair Disk more than once, but hopefully that will do the job.

Once that is done, disconnect the LaCie drive (along with turning it off) and turn off your machine. After a few minutes, start up your machine again, connect the LaCie drive to a USB port, and turn on the drive. Hopefully, it shows up on the desktop.

Let us know if that works.
 
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The LaCie is connected directly to a USB port on my iMac desktop.

I've tried to use Disk Utility but the LaCie drive icon is no longer there. It has been in the past, but no longer.
 

Spawn_Dooley

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Is it possible to connect the LaCie to another Mac to see if it's recognised there?
 

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