Apple Ibook G4 doesn't recognize Portable HD anymore...

[circleinsideabox]

hey i have a seadisk 100gb portable hd that is powered and connected through 2 usb ports...i have used it interchangeably between my mac and pc for months until one day both my mac and pc failed to recognize it....im not sure if my data is lost (i had 94 gigs used)or what...all that happens now when i plug into my mac is it will pop up a message thats says (disc can not be read) and im given the option to intialize,ignore,or eject..please help!!!!!!!!

 

[satrow]

I'd open the box (thus losing any warranty!) and remove the disk to connect it internally within the PC (I don't think it would be seen in the Mac because of the likely filesystem).

hopefully it's just the external box that's died - you can buy a replacement box quite cheaply.

 

[jmgalvin]

Make sure that you try it with different usb wires. One of the wires could have failed.

Are you getting any power? Listen carefully to the thing for the spinning sound. If it has a power switch, turn it off and on and listen for spinning. If you hear the spin, try unplugging and replugging into the mac while both devices are on.

Since you're not getting a mount on either machine, I'd tend to agree with satrow that the houing might be shot (unless it's just a wire). You can go to OWComputing.com to get a new housing. They're stuff is pretty reliable and inexpensive.

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4

 

[circleinsideabox]

im not sure wut u guys mean by housing?
but yes i am getting power....
the disk is recognized
but it simply doesn't "read" it (mac or pc)
kare to elaborate on this housing and if
i kan do the repair myself....

 

[satrow]

Can you give us any error messages you get? Please try to be accurate when quoting them.

 

[jmgalvin]

An outboard hard drive is just a common hd - usually ATA - in a housing with some circuitry for power and to allow it to connect to the computer via firewire or USB. On occasion that housing and/or the enclosed circuitry goes bad.

You can buy these housings for inserting your own hard drive. If the housing (the circuitry) on a preassembled outboard drive goes bad, you can take it apart, remove the drive, and put that old drive in one of the enclosures. If the drive itself is bad, likscrambled, however, that will not help.

Since your drive is usb, there's also a possibility that you're using a driver in your system to control it. Sometimes that driver can go bad due to corruption or updates to the OS. If you've updated both OSX and Windows, there's a chance that the driver, if there is one, could need updating or reinstall. If there's a driver for in on the mac, it should show up in System Prefs, the bottom row "other". Cna't help you on the pc side.

Unfortunately, there are about a 1000 reasons why the drive won't mount. You have to go through a lot a grief to diagnose it.

I'm assuming that the machine will not mount. Have you tried using Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities) to see if it's recognized and it it's repairable?

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4