Trying to connect external USb drive to PowerBook G4

Tried both USB ports on the PowerBook? It looks, like there is not enough power coming from the USB port you have tried with, thus the clicking.

davewill2010 said:

Same result off both ports unfortunately

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The try a USB Y cable like this.

Here is what I have to do on ALL 3 of my ppc macs.Obviously not plugged in but you get the idea I guess it is a power issue as I am forced to do this with my external usb drive as well.

davewill2010 said:

Hi All,

PowerBook G4 running OS X 10.5.8 with a 1.67 Ghz PPC G4 Processor and 1GB of RAM and am having a helluva time getting it to see any USB portable HDD's.

It can read and write to a travel drive type USB drive without any problems but so far have tried:

Seagate BackUp Plus - Brings up a Seagate BackUp Plus folder which you cannot write to and is empty
LACIE RikiKi - doesn't see any drive connected and gives a repeating click
Freecom ToughDrive - Sees no drive connected and gives a repeating click
WD MY Passport - Sees no drive connected and gives a repeating click

All of the above drives are proven working drives by the way.

Any ideas PLEASE?!

Click to expand...

Some of the WD MY Passport drives won't boot/work with PowerMacs/PowerBooks. It looks like most of the drives you are citing are manufactured drives. It may be down to their drive formatting.

If power isn't the issue (i.e., the cable mentioned) then I'd suggest a different solution. A bare hard drive and an external case. Both can be bought at computer stores cheap. And I do mean cheap, I just ordered a 120GB bare hard drive from New Egg on Friday to replace the one in a G4 at work. Cost my boss $16.49 with free shipping. Cases can cost as little as $10, depending on quality. In this instance, since you'd be getting a bare drive and case you can just by the cheapest bare drive you can find as SATA/IDE won't matter. You'll just need the appropriate case, but SATA cases are probably more prevalent now.

The hard drive case in the picture is an acomdata brand it's on ebay for $11 and as eyoungren said hard drives are pretty cheap that external case also has two firewire ports all I gotta do is hold down the alt/option key upon start and I boot linux from it almost daily and its the same finish as the powerbook so they go good together.

g4manimac said:

Here is what I have to do on ALL 3 of my ppc macs.Obviously not plugged in but you get the idea I guess it is a power issue as I am forced to do this with my external usb drive as well.

Click to expand...

Nice idea. I just wish the extra/2nd usb cord wasn't so short.

joepunk said:

Nice idea. I just wish the extra/2nd usb cord wasn't so short.

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Solutions to everything lol this one is the one that came with the hard drive the black one is to my lg external burner I just used it for example I've also ran an extension cord to it.I mainly just use the ibook for a dvd burner and other things so it pretty much stays on the desk all the time anyways.

davewill2010 said:

Hi All,

PowerBook G4 running OS X 10.5.8 with a 1.67 Ghz PPC G4 Processor and 1GB of RAM and am having a helluva time getting it to see any USB portable HDD's.

It can read and write to a travel drive type USB drive without any problems but so far have tried:

Seagate BackUp Plus - Brings up a Seagate BackUp Plus folder which you cannot write to and is empty
LACIE RikiKi - doesn't see any drive connected and gives a repeating click
Freecom ToughDrive - Sees no drive connected and gives a repeating click
WD MY Passport - Sees no drive connected and gives a repeating click

All of the above drives are proven working drives by the way.

Any ideas PLEASE?!

Click to expand...

Hi,

Most of the cases like this are power related. Your laptop doesn't provide enough power over USB - as suggested by others on the thread already. As far as the LaCie goes, we can provide one of the Y-cables or if your model has a power port we can send you a PSU. Most likely you'll have to get smaller capacity disks or try a Flash solution instead of HDD.

Also, give us a call or send a ticket if you need more details. http://Www.lacie.com/mystuff or 503-844-4500

~mn, LaCie

Having a similar issue with an external Toshiba HD. Can't I just reformat the drive on the PPC?

pcfast said:

Having a similar issue with an external Toshiba HD. Can't I just reformat the drive on the PPC?

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Was it originally formatted as NTFS? What kind of PowerPC Mac do you have?

If you can see the drive in Disk Utility you can format it. I would suggest partitioning as APM and formatting as HFS+ Journaled.

eyoungren said:

Was it originally formatted as NTFS? What kind of PowerPC Mac do you have?

If you can see the drive in Disk Utility you can format it. I would suggest partitioning as APM and formatting as HFS+ Journaled.

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Don't remember but I assume it was. I reformatted to FAT32.

I am only getting these options on my iBook G4.

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18464650/

The MS-DOS File System is the same as Fat32.

If the drive isn't mounting on your iBook - there's several methods to get an external USB drive to have enough power, when the single connection to a USB port doesn't quite let it work.

Does your Toshiba drive have a power connector (in addition to the USB connector?) Sometimes the external power is optional on a portable USB drive.

DeltaMac said:

Does your Toshiba drive have a power connector (in addition to the USB connector?) Sometimes the external power is optional on a portable USB drive.

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No, it only has the USB port for power.