External usb hard drive

Hi,

I'm trying to access a usb hard drive (an IBM travelstar USB) on my powerbook but I've no idea how to do it. I've plugged it in but nothing happens. The light on the drive lights up and it spins up, but it does not mount on the desktop. I'm totally new to macs (got it yesterday) so any help would be welcome. Do I need to install drivers? I was under the impression Mac OSX could access, if only for read, both NTFS and FAT32 PC drives? Am I missing something here?

Any help most welcome.

Wicksta

i also have the same problem.it takes some time before the h.drive icon to appear on the desktop. And am only able to save my files on my external h.disk. I can't import the files though. My ibook will freeze.
apparently mac uses fat32.

You should not need any drivers to mount an external USB drive.

It is only possible to read FAT and FAT32 formatted drives in a Macintosh. Only Mac OS X 10.3 Panther works with local NTFS-formatted volumes. The volume will be read-only.
If you attempt to use a NTFS formatted disk, start up using the Mac OS CD, you will prompted to format the drive. DO NOT format the drive if you have data on it, doing so will erase the contents of the drive. If your HD is an NTFS formatted disk, you must use another method to transfer the data from to the Mac, like burning CDs while connecting the drive to a Windows PC.

chouk said:

apparently mac uses fat32.

Click to expand...

Macs do not utilize the FAT 32 file system, however they can read it, as noted above.