06-28-2009, 01:51 AM

I have a Powerbook G4 1.5, 2 Gb Ram and an 80 Gb Hard Drive. Well my problem is, I went and purchased aWestern Digital External Hard Drive. The box states that this hard drive is compatiable for both Windows and Mac. But for some reason I can't get the external hard drive to mount via the firewire. However it will mount by using the USB.

So can someone please provide some troubleshooting tips on how I can get this external hard drive to mount?

Thanks

06-28-2009, 04:36 AM

Its either one of two things

1. The firewire port is dead
Go to the  menu an select About this Mac, then select More info in the window that pops up. Look for the firewire entry, if it gives you the spec for your firewire posrt then the port is OK.

2. Power
Are you running that G4 off its battery? It may not be able to give enough power to that external (the drive might be expecting 24V and the port may only be able to send 12V). Try it again with the Mac connected to the charger, if that doesn't help, can you power the drive with its own juice?

06-28-2009, 10:11 PM

I checked to see if it showed my firewire epecs and it does; it states:

Firewire Bus:

Maximum Speed: Up to 800Mb/sec

Also I do have the computer attached to its power adapter. The hard Drive is also attached to it's own power supply.

I have tried reformatting the drive via the usb and it formats but when I connect the firewire cable it just don't mount.

06-29-2009, 04:24 PM

The Powerbook G4 that I have apparently has 2 firewire ports; 1 that's 400 and the other that's 800.

Now with that said, when I look up my firewire info under System Profiler, shouldn't both of my firewire ports be listed?

like I said in my previous post, only the 800 firewire port is listed.