Help, Macally enclosure not mounting!

[eraserhead83]

Hi folks,

You are my last resort before sending this unit back to seller. Here's the deal I bought a Macally enclosure with a 1TB seagate, model is G-S350SUA, it comes with 2 firewire and 1 usb. I am using a PowerBook G4 1.5 running mac osx 10.5.8.

I connected everything using the firewire, it was recognized the first time no problem, I initialized the drive in mac journaled in disk utility, partitioned my drive in 2 and made a full back up of my system. Everything was smooth I ejected the drive as usual and then shut it down physically and disconnected everything.

Now the drive do not mount anymore, I can hear the HDD but it does not appear on the dektop, nor the panel , dont see it in disk utility either. I tried the other firewire port and the usb...still no result, tried relaunching the finder, restarting the mac...still no result.

Connected everything to a powermac G4 it worked the first time...but now same thing, it does not mount anymore. The ports on both of my mac are funtional, I have another drive, a lacie porsche and it works perfectly.

I checked my powersupply that came wth my macally enclosure, it says 3A, and it does power up the drive...I am lost.

I can not test the drive by itself as I dont have a mac that could accept a sata drive. Any idea people? The only info I could find on the net, was about the powersupply being not strong enough because it originally came with an output of 2A but I doubt it is my case, and the drive do spin, I hear it.

Any idea people? Solution, is the macally enclosure malfunctioning?

 

[Fishrrman]

"I can not test the drive by itself as I dont have a mac that could accept a sata drive. Any idea people"

If you'd like to persue that angle further (that is, to "test" the HD by itself), you might consider one of these gadgets:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=usb+sata+dock&x=0&y=0
They cost only about $20-25, and will become a very handy piece of equipment to have around (particularly if you come into another SATA drive).

You can even boot from these on a Mac that supports booting via USB (although I'm not sure if a PowerBook g4 is capable of USB-booting).

 

[eraserhead83]

Hi there, Thanks for the suggestion, I might grab one but time is running if I decide to send this unit back so the idea of spending more and waiting more does not really appeal to me at the moment.

The worst thing is that first time I connected the HDD it was recognized and I was able to make a full backup, now I just want to reconnect it and securely erase all my personal info and ship this nightmare back to the seller and move on.

I tried rebuilding the spotlight indexes and even turn off spotlight, it did work, the enclosure mounted but it crashed while trying to erase my stuff. I tried a third mac and it worked...but crashed too during the process.

I have found a vista pc with sata drive, but how can I make it work? since it is formatted for mac journaled, the pc do not see the drive. Why would the HDD and the enclosure work the very first time on 3 different mac and refuse to mount when connected for a second time?