12-08-2007, 09:35 PM

To Anyone who can help,

I am having problems with external hard drives. List of equipment first, MacbookPro 15", Leopard, bootcamp (Windows XP), hard drives; Memorex Travel Drive 1 and 2GB, FireLite Smartdisk 60 and 80GB(USB powered), WD Series 2 USB 2.0 120GB, and lastly LaCie d2 Quad 2 500GB. THE PROBLEM..... I have no problem syncing my USB power devices like thumb drives and the FireLite. When I use the 120 or 500gb they will not mount at all. The 120 worked one time to use Time Machine but that was it. I have checked power output at the wall and all are within specs to run the hard drives. What could the problem be, why would only USB powered drives work?

Thanks for your time,
jnotev

12-08-2007, 11:01 PM

Originally Posted by vnote

To Anyone who can help,

I am having problems with external hard drives. List of equipment first, MacbookPro 15", Leopard, bootcamp (Windows XP), hard drives; Memorex Travel Drive 1 and 2GB, FireLite Smartdisk 60 and 80GB(USB powered), WD Series 2 USB 2.0 120GB, and lastly LaCie d2 Quad 2 500GB. THE PROBLEM..... I have no problem syncing my USB power devices like thumb drives and the FireLite. When I use the 120 or 500gb they will not mount at all. The 120 worked one time to use Time Machine but that was it. I have checked power output at the wall and all are within specs to run the hard drives. What could the problem be, why would only USB powered drives work?

Thanks for your time,
jnotev

Are you using the same USB cable with each? If so, maybe the cable is bad.

12-09-2007, 12:08 AM

Check the cables.

Then:

Check and see what format your external HD is in. Go to XP and see if windows can read it.

If you can see it in wondows, and not in Leopard, then go to windows and try to format it to MS-DOS or... I can't remember the different formats. Hopefully someone else can help out, I have to go.

12-09-2007, 12:15 AM

Sometimes USB hubs just don't play nice. My first USB hub would connect with my iPod Shuffle and printer, but not with my hard drives, then eventually it wouldn't connect anything. I tossed it and got a Belkin 7 port hub and it's been fine ever since.

12-09-2007, 11:54 AM

i had a similar problem with leopard when i first got it.

try booting the computer with the drive plugged in and powered on. its something with how 10.5 works with usb externals.

since having this problem, it has dissappeared for me, i can plug the drive in whenever now.

12-09-2007, 05:52 PM

I thought it might have been the cable also so i went out and bought some Belkin cables and they didn't work either. I am not using a USB Hub yet but I thought about trying that also. I have also tried having it plugged in then booting up and nothing.... also nothing on widows. I have read on another post that some said they had there logic board replaced. Whet gets me is that it will all work on my iMac and MacBook (Black).

12-09-2007, 06:21 PM

Originally Posted by EuphLlama

Check the cables.

Then:

Check and see what format your external HD is in. Go to XP and see if windows can read it.

If you can see it in wondows, and not in Leopard, then go to windows and try to format it to MS-DOS or... I can't remember the different formats. Hopefully someone else can help out, I have to go.

If you have access to a Windows PC, check to see if the drive has been formatted to NTFS. NTFS is Microsoft's propriety files system for hard drives, Mac computers can't write to them.

In Windows XP just click My Computer, Click once on your external hard drive, on the left side of the screen under DETAILS, looks for File System: NTFS or FAT32. If it's NTFS, just Right Click on your Hard Drive and select FORMAT. Format your external hard drive to FAT32 so your Mac can read/write to it.

After this you can keep it in FAT32 if you swap between Mac and Windows PCs, if not use Disk Utility in Mac OSX and format it there.

12-09-2007, 07:12 PM

....Migraine....(i take Zomig)

I have connected it to my Windows side and it says it can't read it. As I said before, it works on all other Mac's and PC's, JUST NOT MINE. I am going to buy a hub today and see if that helps. I just don't understand what is wrong with my MBP.

This is starting to give me a migraine.

12-10-2007, 04:43 AM

I bought a LaCie Designed by Porsche 500gb and it works just fine. I tried to use a USB hub with my other hard drives and they still didn't work. Guess everything with the 'Porsche' label means Perfection.

Thanks for all the help.

08-15-2009, 02:32 AM

Salutations and Greetings I'm here only just trying to post to test the new account on this website and just wanted to say hi.