MacBook Pro not recognizing Toshiba 500g Hard drive (i've searched the forum!)

[yyhow]

I have a MacBook Pro running on OSX 10.6
i recently just bought a 500g toshiba canvio 3.0 (USB cable works with 3.0 & 2.0)
the HD out of the box was not recognized by my mac (wont even show up as readonly), but works with a PC
i know it has to be formatted into Fat32 to be used by both windows and mac and thus thats what i did
after formatting it to a fat32, it works on the PC but still recognized on my mac book
so i tried a couple other macbooks and even an iMac and still nothing pops up

can anyone point me to any direction?
im quite lost at this point
thanks

ps: i called the company and they say it will work on mac as long as its fat32 but it still doesnt read

 

[Dysfunction]

Does the drive show in Disk Utility when connected?

 

[yyhow]

it does not
the light on the hard drive is on, so i'm assuming its getting power

 

[dtravis7]

So you are using a USB 2.0 cable to the Mac as Macs do not have USB 3?

It should show up. I have never tried a USB 3 drive on any of my Macs but they are supposed to be backward compatible. Does the PC you tried it with have USB 3 or USB 2?

 

[yyhow]

I think the cable is USB 3.0 & 2.0 compatible
The pc I tried the hard drive with is quite old, maybe 3-4 years old so it shouldn't have a 3.0 USB port
I understand that Mac doesn't support USB 3.0 but I calle in to toshiba just to make sure of that
Their response was that the cable should have no problem connecting to a Mac

 

[yyhow]

anyone have anymore thoughts on this?

 

[cwa107]

anyone have anymore thoughts on this?

Honestly? My first thought would be to return the drive and see if you can get one made by a reputable company. I wouldn't put any data I valued on a Toshiba hard drive.

 

[chscag]

+1 to what cwa107 stated. After two proprietary Toshiba hard drives failed in my Satellite notebook (one was only a month old) I finally smartened up and put in a WD which has been chugging along great for the past two years.

 

[svaal]

To cwa107...its funny to know that Toshiba actually makes the HDD that is inside at least the newest Mac Books, would it be reputable enough??, what would be the reason of Apple to chose it instead any other "reputable" companies?

Anyway... yyhow ....or did anyone come with a solution?

Unfortunately I have the same problem...LOL

I am seriously thinking on putting it on ebay, but if someone have any thoughts, solutions, ideas...would be nice.

Thanks!
Santiago

 

[cwa107]

To cwa107...its funny to know that Toshiba actually makes the HDD that is inside at least the newest Mac Books, would it be reputable enough??, what would be the reason of Apple to chose it instead any other "reputable" companies?

All hard drives are a crap shoot, but Toshibas and Samsungs are particularly bad. It doesn't surprise me that OEMs use them occasionally, what I'm saying is that they're garbage and I'd avoid storing any data I care about on one. So, yes, if I had a Macbook ship to me and found it had an OEM Toshiba drive, I would immediately yank it (as I did with the last Macbook Pro that came with a Fujitsu drive).

 

[Valentina's Dad]

2.0

I just bought the Toshiba Canvio 3.0 Plus 1TB and had the same issue and at this point it is still not working. I have searched the web and have talked to Toshiba, I am waiting for a Toshiba Application Supervisor to call me back within 72 business hours. The answer I received were the same as yours.

Here is what I have tried.

I have a 17" iMac that I have had for quite a few years. I was able to plug the Ext HD into and format it to FAT 32, I was able to copy files on and off of it with no problems.

I plugged the Ext HD into my MacBook Pro and the blue light comes but it will not show up anywhere, not even is the Disk Manager.

I have tried both the cable that came with it and a 2.0 USB with the Micro connector.

I thought about trying another USB 2.0 but at this point I might just try to take it back and get something else.

Has anyone been able to get it to work on a newer Mac?