Removable Drive not working on Mac Mini

[schwine1]

I am trying to connect a removable drive (LG GH24LS50) to a Mac Mini (Late 2014 with OS X El Capitan 10.11.5) using a Vantec sata/ide to usb adapter. After connecting the drive to the computer with the adapter, the drive is not recognized by the computer. The drive is plug and play so it should just work as far as I know.

Thanks for any tips on how to enable this removable drive with an adapter to a Mac Mini.

 

[matreya]

What about power? You know you need power, right? There's not enough from the USB port to drive it.

 

[schwine1]

What's the best way to achieve the power?

 

[chabig]

The adapter should power the drive. Does the adapter have power--something that plugs into the wall?

 

[schwine1]

The adapter is plugged into a power bar, and two lights on the adapter cables are lit up. One light is attached to a black cable and green in color, and the other light is attached to a red cable and red in color. I can manually eject the removable drive from the hard eject button on the removable drive, but the music cd inside the drive does not display in the Devices section of a Finder window, or on the computer desktop. Thanks again for any tips on why data inside the removable drive does not appear in the Finder window or computer desktop.

 

[Fishrrman]

If you go to the "System information" app, and click on "USB" (on the left), does the drive "show up" in the list you see on the right?

 

[schwine1]

If you go to the "System information" app, and click on "USB" (on the left), does the drive "show up" in the list you see on the right?

The SATA/IDE to USB adapter doesn't seem to be listed in USB System Information, nor does the removable drive (see the screenshot with this posting).

The USB cable is 2.0 as opposed to 3.0, if that makes any difference.
The USB System Information does say: "USB 3.0 Bus" but I would guess it's backwards compatible to accommodate a USB 2.0 cable. Still, I could try using an adapter the comes with a 3.0 USB cable.

 

[Fishrrman]

I'm going to -guess- (and it's only "a guess") that something in the adapter -- or perhaps something in the adapter+drive combination -- isn't quite compatible with the Mini's USB.

Might be the controller chip, might be something else.

Sometimes, try as you might, it's just darn near impossible to get a particular piece of hardware to work with another piece of hardware.

The "removable drive" you mentioned above -- is this a DVD/CD type drive, or what?
I suggest you try a DIFFERENT drive, if you need to read/write DVDs and CDs.

Them's the breaks...

 

[schwine1]

The internal removable drive I mentioned has been physically taken out of a now retired 2009 Mac Pro desktop computer. And I am happy to say that the SATA/IDE to USB adapter with the 3.0 version of the USB cable works!

The use of the 3.0 SATA/IDE to USB adapter compared to the 2.0 version made all the difference in this case.
The adapter is an interesting puzzle of wires in how it connects to itself and the removable drive, but it now actually works with version 3.0.

Thanks to everyone for the great support and information.