Portable Hard Drive won't mount

[carlodl]

Hi guys,

I just purchased a Western Digital WD Passport portable hard drive (USB 2.0). The unit is 80GB and is supposed to be bus-powered (no power adapter required). I attached this to my 15" Powerbook 1.25ghz laptop but it won't mount. Tried looking for it in disk utility but it wasn't there also. The only indicator I have that it was attached was in system profiler under USB.

I tried attaching the hard drive to my uncle's iMac G5 and my cousin's Dell Laptop and it woked fine on those computers. I'm wondering if my powerbook's USB ports have a problem? Any ideas? Appreciate anyone's help. Thanks in advance.

[lamski]

I have the same problem connecting my portable HD on my sister's iBook. It seems the USB ports on mac portables don't have enough power to drive those devices. What you need is to purchase a powered portable HD.

[carlodl]

Originally posted by lamski
I have the same problem connecting my portable HD on my sister's iBook. It seems the USB ports on mac portables don't have enough power to drive those devices. What you need is to purchase a powered portable HD.

Wow that's bad news. I guess I just have to bring this back to Best Buy then :sad:

Though there are some portable hard drives such as Lacie that feature USB2.0 + Firewire. Does anyone know if the firewire connection would have enough power to mount the drive?

I'm really disappointed bec. I'm looking for a portable hard drive with no need for an external power supply. I hope the new powerbooks fix this problem! My cousin who owns the Dell laptop kept laughing and said low-tech daw powerbook ko. Bad trip!

[catrina]

before i bought a combo enclosure (usb 2.0 and firewire), i owned a usb 2.0 HDD drive. my HDD would always hang during the copy process. when i switched, i had no problems with it. my advice is to get a combo. its much better. it may be a bit more bulky but its definetely worth it.

[hubes]

Originally posted by lamski
I have the same problem connecting my portable HD on my sister's iBook. It seems the USB ports on mac portables don't have enough power to drive those devices. What you need is to purchase a powered portable HD.

Or you could get a portable HDD with a Firewire port. I'm using one and it's powered by the FW port, I haven't experienced problems so far.

[quicksilver]

i have a samsung 80gb 2.5" hdd. i put it in a cheap matrix usb2.0 enclosure and i'm able to use it with my 12" 1Ghz Pb, without the need for external power. on the other hand, i can't use it with my office desktop winxp pc unless i use a powered usb2.0 hub. :laugh:

[husayno]

Need your advise guys,

Is it always safe to startup using the installed OS in the external HDD? I usually doing this, directly boot and do the works from my panther installed external HD...

Is there any risk? btw, im using a fw combo enclusure (thnk longbeard) in 160 seagate IDE Hd connected to my emac.:qmark::qmark:

[Edited on 5-27-2005 by husayno]

[mac.koto]

StartUp sa External HDD?
ok lang.... but my question is WHY?
Wag lang maddisconnect yung connection
sa FW port or accindentally ma power off....
yikes!

[mistermoya]

I do remember asking Henjie a similar question regarding USB External HDD as mine continually failed to mount and would even cause my laptop and other laptops to hang. In a nutshell, he said that Macs and USB External HDD don't usually work that well together. This is not a generalization though. If you can get a FW External instead that would be a better alternative.

Henjie correct me if I'm wrong please, I asked this question to you privately a long, long time ago. Cheers!!!

[alistair]

Argh! Same problems here. Bought a brand new 200GB Seagate which I put in my old USB 2.0 enclosure. First time I tried to plug it in, the iBook saw it, recognized it as a new drive and offered to initialize it.

Tried partitioning it, but I felt that the Disk Utility had hung or was taking an inordinate amount of time. Force Quit it, and then the Mac wouldn't recognize the drive anymore. :qmark:

Plugged the USB drive to a PC, PC saw it, I could partition it. Rebooted, then the PC couldn't see it anymore.

Out of frustration, I mounted the drive internally in the PC, downloaded Seagate's Disk Wizard Utility. Was able to see the drive, partition and format it no problems (so, I know it's not the HD).

Put it back in enclosure, plugged into PC. PC could see it. Removed all partitions, plugged into Mac. Nada. Plugged back into PC. Nada.

:upset: