USB Hard Drive not recognized anymore

[JurgenWigg]

I'm running a Macbook Core Duo with OSX 10.4.10, and ever since i upgraded awhile back, my USB hard drive isn't recognized. The curious thing being that my parent's iMac recognizes it just fine. very frustrating.

I've tried resetting the pram and whatnot, erasing the disc, reformatting the disc, verifying the disc, offering burnt sacrifices to the disc gods, etc.

Here's some of the kickers - on my macbook, it's not recognized on disc utility, in the finder, nowhere, but under more info in about this mac, it shows up as a USB external storage thingamajig. Also, when i pop in the OSX install disc for my MB and boot from that, THAT disc utility DOES recognize it! Also, i've discovered that I can't repair disc permissions on my external hard drive, i'm not sure if that matters.

Right now it's formatted as OSX extended (journaled) and the Apple System Partition option. Any and all help appreciated.

 

[CrzyCanuck72]

the 10.4.10 has been known to kill external USB harddrives. It caused mine to stop being recognized (by Finder, Disk Utility, everything). I followed a fix that I found on osxhints.com, that involved downloading 10.4.9 and using Pacifist to install only the USB components of that upgrade. I don't have the specific instructions on me, but see if you can find them by googling. They worked for me.

 

[tsd]

You can also try searching on the USB drive manufacturer's website for this issue. They could have some kind of driver update or something, though you really shouldn't need drivers for a USB drive.

 

[JurgenWigg]

WOO!!!!

Two months of this agonizing frustration finally over, but it wasn't easy.

I had to go download Pacifist, AppleJack, and OSX 10.4.9 combo, and then install some of the USB drivers, and then start up in script and have AppleJack clear some of the caches and then it worked!!! I'm pumped.

By the way, I found this fix here:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070628092633507

Some more ways to fix it than are in the article are in the comments - that's where I found my savior! Good luck to all who also need this fix!