Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

External drive to USB driver needed

Dreamkatcha

Dreamkatcha

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 17, 2003
167
0
Manchester, England
I've just bought a device that allows you to connect external drives to a USB port, but I can't access the driver as it comes in a Classic installer, which obviously won't run in OS X. If anyone has the following files...

/System Folder/Extensions/Gene USB ATA Driver
/System Folder/Extensions/Gene USB ATA Shim

...would you be able to email them to me please? Or alternatively if I sent you the installer could you extract it in the Classic environment and send me the contents?

All this is assuming these extensions will work in OS X. Hmm.
 
The drive spins up, but isn't available under Disk Utility or in the Finder and isn't visible in the System Profiler.

I suppose I could use it on a Windows PC, but that's beside the point as it's supposed to be Mac compatible.
 
Nothing under the USB section of System Profiler? Not even a generic mention of it?

I don't know what to tell you. It's eBay page says it supports Mac OS (Classic), not to be confused with Mac OS X. I suppose they never took the time to write drivers for OS X. I'd advise you to check the manufacturer's website, if they have one, anyway.
 
Not with the laptop drive, but here's an interesting development: it works perfectly with my Samsung SATA 3.5in drive. The drive mounts in Finder and Disk Utility and is identified by System Profiler as a USB to Parallel ATA Bridge manufactured by Sunplus Technology Inc.

I'm starting to think power is the issue with the 2.5in drive as there's no way to connect the mains adapter. You'd think it would be low powered enough to run solely from the USB port, but maybe not.
 
Well I've tried it on two Windows PCs now and still no luck. Plug and Play recognises the drive and installs the necessary drivers, but it fails to show up under My Computer. It's listed under Device Manager by its serial number, yet remains inaccessible.

I've read elsewhere that installing the extension GeneIOUSBIDE230 might help, but it doesn't appear to have made any difference. I'm assuming it's OK to just place the folder in System/Library/Extensions seeing as it doesn't come with any instructions.
 
Dreamkatcha said:
Well I've tried it on two Windows PCs now and still no luck. Plug and Play recognises the drive and installs the necessary drivers, but it fails to show up under My Computer. It's listed under Device Manager by its serial number, yet remains inaccessible.
Click to expand...
Windows can't mount the drive because its formatted in HFS. Windows can only read FAT and NTFS drives.

You might consider picking up a copy of MacDrive.
 
After installing MacDrive and waiting through what seemed like an eternal freeze the drive mounted in Windows as E: and on some occasions also as F:. Despite this neither of them could be accessed or repaired due to an I/O error.

I also tried running TransMac and some QuickRecovery thing designed for Mac drives. Both of them are useless.

Thanks for all your help anyway, it's much appreciated.
 
Back on the Mac side I think I may have made some progress. I disconnected all my USB peripherals except for the keyboard and mouse and then reconnected the bridge hooked up to the laptop drive.

This time it appeared in System Profiler, but still wouldn't mount in Finder or show up in Disk Utility. System Profiler identifies the BSD name of the drive as 'disk1' so I thought I might be able to try mounting the drive manually via Terminal.

I created a mount point using the command 'mkdir /Volumes/rescue' and then tried mounting the drive like so: 'mount -t hfs /dev/disk1 /Volumes/rescue'

All I get is the error 'mount_hfs: No such file or directory'. Trying to mount specific partitions e.g. disk1s2 doesn't work either.

Am I at least on the right track?
 
I think you are, but my terminal skills are less than perfect.

If I had to guess I'd say the drive was underpowered. Do you have another Mac you could try it in?
 
Good idea. I've now done that and after a lot of USB plug hopping got System Profiler and Disk Utility to recognise the drive (and partitions in the case of DD).

It still won't mount in Finder and DiskWarrior reports: "Directory cannot be rebuilt due to disk hardware failure (-36 2257)".

I've instructed Disk Utility to try to repair the disk and it's making a real meal of it (the stripy barber's shop progress indicator pole is revolving indefinitely without actually reporting success of any kind).

This isn't looking too hopeful but I'll keep plugging away to try and repair the drive.
 
Eureeka!!! In the end I managed to salvage all my data using Data Rescue II. The drive itself seems to be beyond repair, formatting, repartitioning and so on, but that was the least of my concerns so I'm a happy rabbit.

Thanks again for all your help.
 
Dreamkatcha said:
Eureeka!!! In the end I managed to salvage all my data using Data Rescue II. The drive itself seems to be beyond repair, formatting, repartitioning and so on, but that was the least of my concerns so I'm a happy rabbit.

Thanks again for all your help.
Click to expand...

I'm having the exact same problem as you were having earlier. I have a 2.5" hd from a powerbook and I'm trying to recover data on it. I bought a usb 2.0 adapter( Bytecc BT-300). Although it does successfully mount other 2.5HDs, it doesn't mount the one I need it to. Can you explain to me what you did to solve your problem please?
 
Sorry to hear that, though there's not really a lot I can add that's not already been said in this thread.

As advised I got myself a powered external caddy and then went through the trial and error process of mounting and unmounting it, and connecting it via every single USB port - those on the back of my Mac Mini as well as the ones on my USB hub. Before doing so I unplugged every non-essential USB device to ensure the drive would not be competing for power or other resources.

Then I loaded up Data Rescue II and followed the standard instructions for scanning the drive for salvageable files.

It was a very frustrating experience, but persistence paid off in the end.

About a month too late to be of any help I received a reply from Seagate's tech support dept which may be of assistance to you...

Thank you for sending your E-mail inquiry.

With regards to your query, I understand that the subject drive is inaccessible on another computer.

Note : Seagate do not support connecting Internal drives via USB External Enclosure.
However, if your Seagate PATA drive is not detected when connected via USB using External Enclosure, put the jumper on 'Cable Select' and check if it is accessible.

Else remove the jumper to make it a slave and try connecting the drive directly to the computer, if it is accessible then the drive is fine.

Please make sure that the drive is formatted according to the required file file system on that computer.
Title: PC and Mac File Systems Overview
URL: http://seagate.custhelp.com/cgi-bin...std_adp.php?p_faqid=2581&p_created=1129932431

If you want to use the drive on mac, please follow the steps provided in the following URL to format your drive on MAC: Title: Formatting an Internal or External hard drive using Mac OS
URL: http://seagate.custhelp.com/cgi-bin.../std_adp.php?p_faqid=492&p_created=1004653781

Still you want to work with the drive being connected via USB and if it is not detected please contact the External Enclosure vendor.

If this does not solve the issue please contact our Online Technical Support for further assistance. Due to the nature of your particular problem and the need for interaction, contacting Seagate directly via telephone will provide you with a quicker and more appropriate resolution to your issue.

Seagate technical support agents are available to assist you between 6:30AM and 9:30PM CST, Monday - Friday at 1-800-SEAGATE
(1-800-732-4283).

If you have any additional questions, please let me know.

Thank you,
Abraham Smith
Seagate Technical Support.
1-800-SEAGATE
http://www.seagate.com
Click to expand...

To be fair to him I think he'd picked up on the fact that another colleague had tried to fob me off with a really lame we-don't-support-external-enclosures response and was trying to build some bridges by going the extra mile. I would have been very grateful if my question had been passed to him in the beginning.

Anyway I hope some of that is of use to you. :)
 
If connect a hard drive to a computer using BYTECC BT-300 and nothing happens...

matfitz said:
..I bought a usb 2.0 adapter( Bytecc BT-300)....
Click to expand...

A little OT, but if I connect a hard drive (no enclosure) directly to the Bytecc BT-300 through the SATA Drive port and I don't see anything show up on the screen..Or when I go into Disk Utility, I don't see my hard drive, does that mean that my hard drive is dead?

I installed a WD3200BEVT in my MacBook Pro and it was working fine but it was recently sent to Applecare where heavy repairs occurred and my computer was returned with this hard drive taken out and a new one (only 150gb) put in. I am not quite sure why by looking at their notes, but my assumption was that it failed in their testing?).

I took my BYTECC BT-300 directly to the WD3200BEVT and I can hear the hard drive making noise, but nothing is happening on screen.
 
Sorry to necro this but I just ran into the same problem and maybe someone else will run into this on google like i did.. Taking the jumper off the drive (fist thing i tried don't know what it set the drive to) made the drive pop right up on the desktop in 10.6.7.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back