New MacBooks Drive in External Enclosure

[yozh]

So, when I ordered my macbook on tuesday I also ordered a 320GB 7200 RPM Segate from NewEgg, and it came as a combo with an enclosure, so I tought to my self great I`ll use the 160GB in the enclosure and attach it to my router Asus WL500G P which has 2 USB 2.0 ports and the enclosure is just USB no power or anything. So when I attached it to my router nothing it doesnt see the drive and I hear strange clicking, so I said to my self hmm bad drive another trip to Apple store..... But just in case I tried it in the MacBook it self and it was fine, so then I tried with enclosure and setup TM for it, to my surprise it did all 20GB time machine with no problem, so I went and attached it to my Windows XP machine and clicking again and drive is not mounting... Whats going on here ? Is this thing only works with MACs ? Is the enclosure bad ? Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

 

[vandozza]

maybe you need to format the drive in a windows format (FAT) not HFS+ mac formatting, for the router, and PC to pick it up properly?

 

[taylorwilsdon]

So, when I ordered my macbook on tuesday I also ordered a 320GB 7200 RPM Segate from NewEgg, and it came as a combo with an enclosure, so I tought to my self great I`ll use the 160GB in the enclosure and attach it to my router Asus WL500G P which has 2 USB 2.0 ports and the enclosure is just USB no power or anything. So when I attached it to my router nothing it doesnt see the drive and I hear strange clicking, so I said to my self hmm bad drive another trip to Apple store..... But just in case I tried it in the MacBook it self and it was fine, so then I tried with enclosure and setup TM for it, to my surprise it did all 20GB time machine with no problem, so I went and attached it to my Windows XP machine and clicking again and drive is not mounting... Whats going on here ? Is this thing only works with MACs ? Is the enclosure bad ? Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

Could be a couple of things. If its a USB only (no external power adapter), then the USB port on the PC isn't giving off enough power and the drive cannot engage. That would cause the clicking.

With that said, a Mac formatted drive (HFS) won't mount on a Windows machine in the first place, without a software like MacDrive.

 

[yozh]

Could be a couple of things. If its a USB only (no external power adapter), then the USB port on the PC isn't giving off enough power and the drive cannot engage. That would cause the clicking.

With that said, a Mac formatted drive (HFS) won't mount on a Windows machine in the first place, without a software like MacDrive.

Ofcourse it wouldnt mount, but it would show up in disk management so I can format it. Well here is a intresting thing. I connected it to my wifes laptop and here it did recognize it, and I found that there is a 200mb partition thats marked "GPT Protected" I wonder if thats the problem. Also I`m kind of suspecting power as well, but desktop PC should be able to work fine shouldnt it ?

 

[Saladinos]

GPT protected partition is nothing to worry about. All GPT hard disks have one of those; it's an invisible partition.

Disk management doesn't show networked drives.

If your enclosure has a power plug, plug it in.

 

[yozh]

GPT protected partition is nothing to worry about. All GPT hard disks have one of those; it's an invisible partition.

Disk management doesn't show networked drives.

If your enclosure has a power plug, plug it in.

As mentioned above, no power plug, the router is running hacked version of firmware so I can telnet to see the drives and it doesnt come up and clicks some times. I`m thinking it has to be the power on the enclosure.....