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KevRC4130

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 1, 2004
278
0
Massachusetts
I'm wondering how you access the external drive on an iBook when there is no disk inserted? I know the icon appears when there is a disk inserted, but is there any way to access it without a disk inserted? What I'm looking for is basically the equivalent of a "My Computer" on Windows?

Thanks
 
KevRC4130 said:
I'm wondering how you access the external drive on an iBook when there is no disk inserted? I know the icon appears when there is a disk inserted, but is there any way to access it without a disk inserted? What I'm looking for is basically the equivalent of a "My Computer" on Windows?

Thanks
not too sure what your trying to do there ? do you mean a usb floppy ? or external HDD ?

explain abit more what your trying to do :)
 
KevRC4130 said:
I'm wondering how you access the external drive on an iBook when there is no disk inserted? I know the icon appears when there is a disk inserted, but is there any way to access it without a disk inserted? What I'm looking for is basically the equivalent of a "My Computer" on Windows?

Thanks

To my knowledge there is no way to do this. But why do you want to. i always thought that was a pretty silly hting in windows anyway. I mean, when I double click it in windows, it just tells me to insert a disc. Why would you want this functionality?

If you want to compare, the finder IS the equivelent of the "my computer" On a mac, you just work directly with the computer. I never liked in windows how the desktop is not considered part of "my computer"
 
There's no way to access it, because there's nothing there except hardware. And the hardware doesn't mount, it mounts the floppies you insert. If you have a floppy that isn't mounted, it's likely that the floppy is corrupt.
 
yellow said:
There's no way to access it, because there's nothing there except hardware. And the hardware doesn't mount, it mounts the floppies you insert. If you have a floppy that isn't mounted, it's likely that the floppy is corrupt.
lol this is why i could not understand what he was tring to do

nothing in it , so you can't see it :D
 
Thanks for the help so far.

OK, well here's the scoop. My sister is in law school, and I convinced her to get an iBook. I'm now in charge of solving all of her Mac-related problems :rolleyes:

Anyways, tomorrow she is taking her Final, and she is taking it on the computer. Apprently they give you a disk that basically kills everything on the computer except the test (so you don't look up answers on files, internet, etc). She wants to be able to know what is doing on with the drive in the event that things do not go smoothly, so she wants to have access to it...

Honestly, I'm not exactly sure why she wants to do this either, but I'm doing everything I can to convince her that she made the right decision getting a Mac. :)
 
KevRC4130 said:
Thanks for the help so far.

OK, well here's the scoop. My sister is in law school, and I convinced her to get an iBook. I'm now in charge of solving all of her Mac-related problems :rolleyes:

Anyways, tomorrow she is taking her Final, and she is taking it on the computer. Apprently they give you a disk that basically kills everything on the computer except the test (so you don't look up answers on files, internet, etc). She wants to be able to know what is doing on with the drive in the event that things do not go smoothly, so she wants to have access to it...

Honestly, I'm not exactly sure why she wants to do this either, but I'm doing everything I can to convince her that she made the right decision getting a Mac. :)
Sorry, by external drive do you mean a CD-ROM? iBooks have internal CD ROM drives... and no floppy at all.
The disk they're giving is Windows only, unless I mis-remember the thread a few months ago on this.
Get her to ask the school what machine(s) this situation is compatible with.
 
She needs to talk to someone at the school about this test and say that she's using a Mac.
 
I am talking about a floppy disk drive. I talked to her again, and found out that the disk/test is Mac compatible. The only reason she really wanted to know this was just as a troubleshooting kind of thing... She was worried that if for some reason the icon (of the floppy) did not pop up or went away, she would have no way to access what was on the disk. Basically we're looking for an alternate way to access the disk, besides the icon. Hopefully I've clarified.

Thanks!
 
The iBook doesn't have a floppy disk drive. How can it be Mac compatible if they only have a floppy solution?

This is an image of a floppy, just to make sure there's no confusion about this.
images
 
gekko513 said:
The iBook doesn't have a floppy disk drive. How can it be Mac compatible if they only have a floppy solution?

This is an image of a floppy, just to make sure there's no confusion about this.

of course a floppy can be mac compatible, you know many years went by before consumer cd-r devices. Now able to use a floppy is another thing which is what you are really going for since floppy drives haven't shipped with macs for well real^l^l^l^ly.
 
gekko513 said:
The iBook doesn't have a floppy disk drive. How can it be Mac compatible if they only have a floppy solution?

This is an image of a floppy, just to make sure there's no confusion about this.
images


If you read my origional post, you will see that I am talking about an external drive. I am saying the test-taking program on the disk is Mac compatible.
 
KevRC4130 said:
If you read my origional post, you will see that I am talking about an external drive. I am saying the test-taking program on the disk is Mac compatible.
Aaah, doh, now I get it.

If it works as with other mountable drives. It will show up in the Finder (and on the Desktop) when a floppy is inserted if it mounts correctly. If it doesn't mount correctly it may still show up in Disk Utility, but I'm guessing that doesn't help much for the purposes of this test-taking thing.
 
I think the closest thing to what you want to do is to use Disk Utility. If a disk is known to the computer, but not mounted, you'll still be able to see it in Disk Utility, and mount it from there. FWIW, I've used an external floppy drive on my Macs a few times, and never had any problems. Just plugged in a drive, inserted a floppy, and the disk icon showed up on the desktop as it should have.
 
If whatever's on the floppy "basically kills everything on the computer except the test", one would presumably be unable to access or run Disk Utility.

I would think that the floppy would have to contain an application that you have to authorize to let it modify low-level services so as to monopolize your Mac with the test. Either the floppy would be recognized and the application would run when you launched it, or it wouldn't/wouldn't in which case it would not do any damage either. To eject it, you might need to insert a straightened paper clip into the little manual-eject hole if the OS doesn't recognize that a floppy has been inserted (do external USB floppies have those holes?) but I'd think that would only happen if the disk were corrupted.
 
You might also just insert a blank floppy into the drive and let her experience what happens when she inserts the test disk. My expectation would be that the drive would just mount on her desktop and maybe a finder window open up and she'd have to click on the test application. Anyway, if you were to just put a disk in there, it would probably mount on the desktop and she could see what was going on.
 
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