05-13-2004, 01:59 PM

So I was a PC user until yesterday. Bought a 30gb portable drive that would work between PC and MAC so I can work on both. I am SO sad that my ibook doesnt read my portable drive!

I brought it into the apple store and it works FINE with any other mac like powerbook, imac etc. It only doesnt work with 1ghz ibook (both 12 and 14"). it even worked fine with the ibook 800mhz!!

Just wondering if anyone has had the same problem working the ibook g4 (1ghz) with any mass storage devices (that needs lots of power). I'm sssooo upset. please help and dont make me give up on mac!!!

05-13-2004, 02:07 PM

Is the external drive depending on the iBook for power?

05-13-2004, 02:09 PM

Originally Posted by witeshark

Is the external drive depending on the iBook for power?

yes relies on ibook for power. I tried to power it up with an external ac/dc adapter as well, but it still didnt read.

05-13-2004, 02:10 PM

Originally Posted by witeshark

Is the external drive depending on the iBook for power?

oh. i can hear the portable drive go on with this whirring sound the light is a strong green so i know there is some power getting to it. I am sad this isnt as smooth a transition as i thought it would be. time to switch to a mac? Convince me!

05-13-2004, 02:10 PM

Have you tried putting the drive into another firewire enclosure?

05-13-2004, 02:12 PM

Originally Posted by immdb

Have you tried putting the drive into another firewire enclosure?

hmm i dont get what u mean by firewall enclosure? right now i plug it into the usb 2.0 port?

05-13-2004, 02:19 PM

have you tried going into Disk utility in applications/utilities and try to mount the drive

05-13-2004, 03:24 PM

Ok tried to mount it on disk utility and it actually showed up on the desk top!!!! woohoo
i did the df - k thing on termnal and it has been mounted on /Volumes/NO NAME
Thank you so much!!!
it took a hecka long time to appear tho (about 3-5 mins) and it only took like 10 seconds on the other macs at the apple store. Is that normal?
I Am transfering stuff over now but it is kinda slow. i thought 2.0 would be alot faster.

Question: Do I need to unmount if i want to remove it, and mount it again when I plug it in for use next time??

05-13-2004, 03:33 PM

i guess i didnt dismount properly, and when i removed the device and now the ibook is just hanging with that wheel turning and nothing has happened for 10 minutes...

i want to do a ctrl-alt-delete to cancel that task that is hanging.... can we do that on mac? or is there something similar i can do?

05-13-2004, 03:38 PM

Option-Apple-Escape

05-13-2004, 03:43 PM

Done. Cancelled all my apps that are runing but that stupid colored wheel is still turning and I cant do anything to stop this. (recap: tihs happened after i dismounted badly)
Does this mean I have to go for the power key?

05-13-2004, 04:18 PM

either than, or you'll have to do a hard power down, and pull the battery out.....dismounting things correctly is very very important...if you don't do it right...a lot of bad things can happen...and this goes for mac/pc windows osx...everything...

05-13-2004, 07:05 PM

Another option (probably not for a bad dismount) is Apple menu - force quit option if this isn't working in termianl the kill (PID) is very powerful PID = process ID number. type top to see all running. The super kill is kill -9

05-13-2004, 09:30 PM

Note that you can relaunch finder either through the force quit menu or ctrl/right click on the finder in the dock. That may help when you get that spinning disk again.