I can no longer see my Internal drive as a desktop icon or in the Finder or file system unless I use tinker tools and set the "show hidden files" option on. I can see it ok in Disk Utility. The same issue applies for a partition I have on an external drive.



iMac - OS X 10.5.5

Any idea what caused it? (inquiring minds . . . )

If the 'hidden' flag is set, this should clear that up:
chflags nohidden /{,Volumes/*}

[if you get a 'Permission denied' message, you'll need to add sudo
onto the beginning and supply an admin password when asked.]

Normally i would request a listing first:
ls -lOd /{,Volumes/*}
but the chflags line i wrote is harmless.

If it's not the hidden flag, we'll have to try something else.

-HI-

> [if you get a 'Permission denied' message, you'll need to add sudo
onto the beginning and supply an admin password when asked.]

You didn't instruct castingflame to type a space, which I've always thought is necessary, after "sudo."

Am I correct, and, if so, will the omission cause any problems?

delicata:~ dkmarsh$ sudochflags nohidden /{,Volumes/*}
-bash: sudochflags: command not found

(IOW, yes, the space is necessary; no, the omission won't cause any problems.)

dkmarsh is on the money (as always).

i'll just add artie505 that... the first string is always "interpreted" to be a command,
so -- if there were an actual command named sudochflags -- then it would be run.
otherwise -- as long as no semicolon (;) on the line produces some other command,
then the whole thing just fails with 'command not found' (as shown above).

I wonder did you uncheck the "show" options in finder preferences?

OP mentioned something about "tinker tools - show hidden files" being able to reveal the missing icons.
[so i doubt it's a finder prefs type of deal here]

Thanks everyone for your quick help.

sudo chflags nohidden /{,Volumes/*}

did the trick so kudos to Hal Itosis for the fix. I had already checked system and finder settings and preferences.

I have a feeling it was either to do with 1 of 2 things:

1. The demo of vmware fusion. I know that this did hide my DVD drive in OS X when I mounted it as a device in my windows xp VM.

2. Carbon Copy Cloner. The only reason that this looks guilty is that the external USB drive partition was a clone of my Mac HD and both were hidden.

Thanks again, I only got my iMac a week ago!