External hard drives not recognized by new imac

teethdr · teethdr #1 (**permalink**)

09-02-2010, 12:30 PM

I recently purchased a 27 inch iMac and I am unable to get my external hard drives to mount. One is a new seagate and the other is a simpletech that is several years old. Both are NTFS formatted and neither of them show up on desk utility or system profiler. I downloaded Tuxera NTFS-3G but that did not help. Both external hard drives work on my PC laptop and on a friends 24 inch iMac. I know the USB ports work because I have a card reader and a flash drive that work no problem. Anybody have any idea what might be the problem?

chscag · chscag #2 (**permalink**)

09-02-2010, 01:53 PM

If neither of them are showing up from Disk Utility or the System Profiler, it could be caused by too much power being drawn from the USB ports or the ports are not working right. Card readers and flash drives generally draw very little power compared to most hard drives or an iPod.

You might want to run the Apple Hardware Test on your machine to see if anything shows up.

teethdr · teethdr #3 (**permalink**)

09-02-2010, 02:17 PM

Ok. I tried 2 other hard drives, one formatted NFTS and the other some Windows format, and they both worked. I'm baffled.

DavidHH · DavidHH #4 (**permalink**)

09-02-2010, 03:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chscag

If neither of them are showing up from Disk Utility or the System Profiler, it could be caused by too much power being drawn from the USB ports or the ports are not working right. Card readers and flash drives generally draw very little power compared to most hard drives or an iPod.

You might want to run the Apple Hardware Test on your machine to see if anything shows up.

It still might be the USB Power as the other units you tried might draw less power.

Are you plugging the driver directly into the computer?

DavidH

teethdr · teethdr #5 (**permalink**)

09-02-2010, 10:56 PM

I think you're right. I tried two smaller external hard drives and they both worked fine on my iMac. Both of the hard drives that fail to mount are much larger (320GB and 500GB) with external power supplies. These do, however, work on an older 24 inch iMac. This is actually my 2nd 27 inch iMac in a month because Apple replaced the original with the exact same problem. Is this a common problem for them I wonder?

chscag #2 (permalink)
Member Since: Jan 23, 2008 Location: Fort Worth, Texas Posts: 31,978 Mac Specs: 21.5" iMac 2.5 GHz i5, iPad 3rd Gen., 3 iPods	09-02-2010, 01:53 PM If neither of them are showing up from Disk Utility or the System Profiler, it could be caused by too much power being drawn from the USB ports or the ports are not working right. Card readers and flash drives generally draw very little power compared to most hard drives or an iPod. You might want to run the Apple Hardware Test on your machine to see if anything shows up. Community Guidelines
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teethdr #1 (permalink)
Member Since: Sep 02, 2010 Posts: 3	09-02-2010, 12:30 PM I recently purchased a 27 inch iMac and I am unable to get my external hard drives to mount. One is a new seagate and the other is a simpletech that is several years old. Both are NTFS formatted and neither of them show up on desk utility or system profiler. I downloaded Tuxera NTFS-3G but that did not help. Both external hard drives work on my PC laptop and on a friends 24 inch iMac. I know the USB ports work because I have a card reader and a flash drive that work no problem. Anybody have any idea what might be the problem?
	QUOTE Thanks

teethdr #5 (permalink)
Member Since: Sep 02, 2010 Posts: 3	09-02-2010, 10:56 PM I think you're right. I tried two smaller external hard drives and they both worked fine on my iMac. Both of the hard drives that fail to mount are much larger (320GB and 500GB) with external power supplies. These do, however, work on an older 24 inch iMac. This is actually my 2nd 27 inch iMac in a month because Apple replaced the original with the exact same problem. Is this a common problem for them I wonder?
	QUOTE Thanks

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