Newbie: problems with external drives being recognized...

[Argelius]

I am a freshly hatched Switcher am am stumped by the inability of my 15" Powerbook to recognize either of two USB portable hard drives. one is a Lacie that requires no special OSX drivers (according to their website); the other (the brand name is currently escaping me) also supposedly needs no special driver. Both are Powered via the USB port.

when I plug either in to any USB port on the PowerBook, nothing happens (i.e. no new drive icon appears on the desktop). The LEDs on the drives illuminate okay.

I've used other USB devices so I know the ports are functioning.

Both of these drives were used (i.e. formatted) for Windows PCs. I am guessing this might prevent files from being read, but shouldn't the drive at least be recognized?

Also, if there are mp3s or jpg files on the drive, wi' Mac be able to read them regardless of the formatting of the drive?

Thanks for your help.

 

[slooksterPSV]

I am a freshly hatched Switcher am am stumped by the inability of my 15" Powerbook to recognize either of two USB portable hard drives. one is a Lacie that requires no special OSX drivers (according to their website); the other (the brand name is currently escaping me) also supposedly needs no special driver. Both are Powered via the USB port.

when I plug either in to any USB port on the PowerBook, nothing happens (i.e. no new drive icon appears on the desktop). The LEDs on the drives illuminate okay.

I've used other USB devices so I know the ports are functioning.

Both of these drives were used (i.e. formatted) for Windows PCs. I am guessing this might prevent files from being read, but shouldn't the drive at least be recognized?

Also, if there are mp3s or jpg files on the drive, wi' Mac be able to read them regardless of the formatting of the drive?

Thanks for your help.

Maybe it should be recognized.

And it doesn't matter what's on the HDD, you could have exe's and it won't care. It should just mount it as a FAT32, NTFS, or at the worst FAT16 hard drive.

Let's see... do you have any powercables or that? Maybe the USB device isn't giving all the current it needs to the devices. What version of OS X? If you open disk utility, does it even show the volume?

Once you can give us this information, this'll help us better.

Thanks