External Hard Disc Not Mounting

[geo6121]

Hello Everybody,

I'm having the following problem :

I just purchased a Comstar USB 2.0 Mobile Hard Drive & can *not* mount it on an iBook G4 but it comes up fine on an Intel-Mac. Also, it is marked "MS Dos File System (FAT32); is this normal ?

The disk mounted 1 time out of 2 in the very beginning but no more luck in that area.

A tiny disk was in the box marked "Drivers". Would anybody know what device can be used to read the disk ? There are no openings on the drive.

Thanks in advance

 

[mklos]

Does the hard drive have 2 usb plugs? 1 for data and 1 for power? If so, make sure BOTH are plugged in on the iBook. Also, try it with the iBook plugged into an AC outlet if its running off the battery.

You can go to MacintoshHD/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and see if the external HD shows up in the left hand side bar.

Its showing MSDOS format because that is what its formatted for. This is only useful if you plan on using it for both Windows and OS X. Mac OS X can read/write to FAT32, but NOT to NTFS. OS X can currently only read NTFS volumes. If you don't plan on using it with Windows PC's then you can reformat it for HFS+ (Journaled) which is what Mac OS X uses for its file system. If you do this, it will no longer be easily usable with Windows. You can format the HD while you're in Disk Utility. Just select the external HD (will probably have an orange HD icon) and then click on the erase tab and then select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) from the pull down menu and then click on erase. DOING SO WILL ERASE ALL DATA OFF THE HARD DRIVE!!!! You have been warned!

Let me know if you have any questions or problems....

 

[geo6121]

Please see inline :

Does the hard drive have 2 usb plugs? 1 for data and 1 for power? If so, make sure BOTH are plugged in on the iBook. Also, try it with the iBook plugged into an AC outlet if its running off the battery.

--> There are 3 "plugs", 1 is in the iBook, the 2nd in the HD & the third waiting ...

--> The iBook is always plugged into an AC outlet

You can go to MacintoshHD/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and see if the external HD shows up in the left hand side bar.

--> It's usually *not* there.

Its showing MSDOS format because that is what its formatted for. This is only useful if you plan on using it for both Windows and OS X. Mac OS X can read/write to FAT32, but NOT to NTFS. OS X can currently only read NTFS volumes. If you don't plan on using it with Windows PC's then you can reformat it for HFS+ (Journaled) which is what Mac OS X uses for its file system. If you do this, it will no longer be easily usable with Windows. You can format the HD while you're in Disk Utility. Just select the external HD (will probably have an orange HD icon) and then click on the erase tab and then select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) from the pull down menu and then click on erase. DOING SO WILL ERASE ALL DATA OFF THE HARD DRIVE!!!! You have been warned!

--> I formatted it for HFS+ (Journaled) this afternoon

Let me know if you have any questions or problems....

--> The procedure is never exactly the same. Here is what has happened :

- No problem, it mounts as expected
- Doesn't mount at all, I take out the "plug" & put it back from 1 to 10 times. It mounts or I give up for the moment
- It doesn't mount, I open Disk Utilities & it mounts - or it doesn't & I repeat the above mentioned procedure
- It's mounted & I move it a few inches in any direction, it ejects itself & I get a warning that it "was put away ...". When this happens, something goes wrong like I can't get system preferences to open so I restart the machine

--> I checked the connections very carefully, nothing is lose.

By the way, thanks for your reply.

I had a look at your web site, I like the no color scheme, I'll return first thing tomorrow to have a look around ...