New External HD problem

So I just got a WD 320GB HD to back everything up on my PowerBook before I make the jump to a new unibody. Well I plugged in the HD to the powerbook and nothing shows up on my desktop and the LED on the front of it doesnt even come on. I do hear the HD spinning but there is still no connection with the laptop. I plugged it in my desktop thats running windows xp and the bugger started right up and the led indicator flashed and i could access the HD.

My initial thoughts were that maybe my powerbook doesnt have USB 2.0? Dunno tho but what else could be the problem? Anyone know?

PowerBook Specs:

1.25 GHz PowerPC
512 MB SDRAM
OSX v. 10.4.11 (the box says it will work with mac v. 10.4.10+)


Thanks!

Most if not all USB 2.0 devices are backwards compatible, so I don't know if that is an issue or not.

Hmmm.... any ideas then??

bump, still lookin for help or an answer

bump, anyone???

Do I need to format it for my computer? I want to be able to put files from my mac and copy them to/from another PC. Is that NTFS or FAT32

The Harddrive needs to be in FAT32 for you to be able to READ/WRITE to it on the Mac, unless you use it over a network, or with a Mac software that allows you to write to NTFS.

If you do FAT32, you are only limited to 4GB MAX file size.

Ugh...thats gay. Why dont they change that or have a way around it.... i thought they were trying to make things work more easily. I guess its the same reason they got rid of the firewire port on the new unibody mac, no one knows..

There is little Apple can do in regards to NTFS. Microsoft doesn't want to release any info on it, so Apple can't support it out of the box.

Found out the problem on Best Buys website under reviews:

What's not so great: Cannot be powered by all laptops

"This is a good product but if you have a Mac PowerBook G4, please know that this cannot be powered by a single USB connection. You will have to buy a seperate cable that utilizes both available USB ports.

The reason for this is that the drive does not completly conform to the USB specs and the PowerBook G4 only supplies the power required by the USB 2.0 spec."

In which case, buy a mains or battery powered USB hub. In addition to your external drive, you can run a lot of other devices on a powered hub.