macbook not seeing external hard drive

[chardynh]

I want to upgrade to a larger drive so I purchased a new sata 500 gb drive and external case it will not show up either on the desktop or in disk utilities. I have tried two cases two cables and even bought another drive and no luck. I am runnin 10.5.8 system and my time machine external drive shows up fine any idea what Im missing here. I also tried the drive on my sons macbook pro running 10.8.5 no luck Ive tried restarting and even booted with a 10.5 install disk in the cd drive still doesnt show. I have clowned my hard drive with carbon copy cloner on my time machine drive but am reluctant to put the new drive in my machine and try that.

 

[MCAsan]

Two sets of drives, enclosures, and cables fail to been seen by both your machine and your son's machine ...on USB2 or FW ports?

If USB 2, can you plug them into a friends's computer just to see if the machine sees anything? If FW you will need to try another Mac that has FW ports.

 

[chardynh]

usb

 

[BrianBaughn]

What model?

Two computers failing to detect the drive could mean several things including:

• The drive is faulty
• The drive's housing electronics are faulty
• It's a 3.5" drive that requires a power supply that's not plugged in or isn't working properly

 

[chardynh]

both drives are 2.5 in. satas both drives were tried in two diff cases with two diff cables with three diff computers 10.5.8,10.6.8 and 10.8.5 OS six dif usb ports one of the cases worked on another computer to swap out a drive the other case is new Ive tried resarting with drive pluged in Ive tried booting from a mac OS install disk in the usb drive Im really stuck here I dont have a PC to try them on one is a Western digital one is a HGST both 5400 rpm

 

[BrianBaughn]

What about the drive housings? What models are those?

 

[chardynh]

Vantec NexStar TX and a cheap rubbery one that came in a tool kit for changing macbook Hd which I borrowed that my son got to work when he changed his drive

 

[chardynh]

Thanks for the help turned out BOTH enclosures were junk (what are the odds of that) got a good enclosure both drives worked mint