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Help with ext. HD not showing up?

TwinCities Dan

TwinCities Dan

macrumors 603
Original poster
May 19, 2008
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Double Parked out front of the Courthouse
I received a SimpleTech SimpleDrive 500 gig external HD. I don't have any discs or manuals but I have read their site and can't find any downloadable drivers etc.

When I plug it in, nothing happens. It seems my MBP doesn't even see it? :confused:

Any ideas?
 
Have you tried all the USB ports on the computer? Also, any other computers close by that you can test it out with? If it doesn't work in any computer then it would obviously be the hard drive. I can only imagine that most hard drives would be plug and play.... I know my Western Digital portable hard drive worked right away with nothing needing to be installed.
 
Are you attaching via USB or Firewire? Does the drive require an external power supply? Some drives can draw enough power from the port to spin up, but not enough to operate fully without an external power supply.

Wow! I did some Googling after I posted and ran across some really negative comments about this drive! Here's a few from Newegg.com:

DO NOT BUY THIS DRIVE!!!!
Reviewed By: Jawzzz on 3/26/2008
Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
Pros: None
Cons: My company bought 8 of these for desktop backups. One was DOA (wouldn't power up). Another one just had a drive fail. These units use Hitachi DeathStar drives, which if you look at the reviews for those, they are equally prone to failure. Poor cost-cutting choice by SimpleTech to go with these drives. Would not recommend!!!

Reviewed By: on 2/22/2008
Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year
Pros: None
Cons: Not very portable, actually pretty heavy and big. Died on me after 2 months of usage. I used this hard drive as my secondary back up device, so pretty much lost all the data on it. The power module was the problem, but it also fried the hard drive in it. Good thing it was my secondary back up device.
Other Thoughts: I ended up getting a Maxtor after this one, I'd rather pay a higher cost for piece of mind. After about 8 months the maxtor is running just fine.
Click to expand...

While these are only a couple reviews, there might be a good possibility you have a defective drive.
 
After I put my old 160g in an enclosure after I upgraded to a 320g, I had the same issue. I had to keep plugging and unplugging, sometimes with the AC adapter and sometimes without.

Now it works every time. I'm not sure what I exactly did either.
 
I can only imagine it may be dead then. Any windows computers around that you can try it out on?
 
firstapple said:
I can only imagine it may be dead then. Any windows computers around that you can try it out on?
Click to expand...


HAHAHA, usually I'm PROUD not to have any windows machines... ;)

Nope, those are my only computers, so I guess I'm SOL :(

I tried looking thru System Profiler, isn't there any way to see if something is plugged in to my USB port? I still get nothing... :confused:
 
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