Portable Hard Drive won't mount

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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:

 

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]

 

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!

 

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!!!

 

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:

 

alistair,

You might be having problems with the enclosure itself. Borrow one from someone just to test.

 

Could be, but I've been using this with an 80GB Maxtor for 2 years na no problems on either platform. Howell. I guess I'll spring for a Firewire enclosure na lang just to avoid the headache...

 

there is no problem with the enclosure. had that similar problem before and after searching, found out that USB powered portable drives will not be recognized (unless you use firewire) because the port of the powerbook is underpowered. If your USB cable has 2 USB connectors, try connecting both to your 2 ports and the drive will power up (you will have to get an USB extension connector kasi di aabot)...

hope this helps.

 

Thanks, but I forgot to mention the external (5.25") HD enclosure has its own power supply... Carlo S. suggested 'prepping' (that is, partitioning and formatting) the drive using MacDrive on the PC and see if that mounts on the Mac... am trying that right now.

 

Just one final update for anyone who's curious.

Tried everything, FAT32, NTFS, HFS+. Partitioned & formatted the drive in the PC.

When in the enclosure, plugged to the PC - works fine. Plug it into Mac, won't mount. Funny thing is, when I plug it back to the PC (after plugging it into the Mac), then the PC fails to see the external HD too!

Tried mounting the old drive (80GB IDE, formatted using FAT32 & NTFS) - worked just as usual.

I'm putting it down as some inability of the enclosure to handle a large/new drive. Will have to get a new enclosure, preferably Firewire, and pray that works. Otherwise - anybody in the market for a 1-day old 200GB Seagate?

[Edited on 6-27-2005 by alistair]

 

I had the same problem, Bought an enclosure with a 2 USB into 1 splitter wire. Whenever, I use it on my PBook, I have to use 2 USB ports so that it had adequate power

 

I didn't even know that's possible to do w/ USB cables! :devious:

But I guess if you're just using the same cables for the same purpose and from only one source, then it wouldn't have any problems, right?

Simple, but nonetheless amazing! :cheers:

Does the enclosure comes w/ it already, I mean the "2 USB into 1 splitter wire," or you bought this separately? :embarrased:

How much would it cost? :angel:

 

It was a package deal form some guy of TipidPC. 80GB notebook HD with the enclosure plus the 2 USB into 1 wire for 5,500.

 

So I guess this is only for the portable hard drive right?

Coz I can mount the iPod and charge it using the USB port, which explains that it has enough power to use the iPod.

 

Yes, I can also mount and charge an Ipod from my Pbook USB but without the 2nd USB plugged in, my external HD will not mount