Mac question...removable drive

HardDrive · 09-10-2006, 10:56 AM

I put together a external drive enclosure using a 2.5 drive for my wifes Mac. She saw mine and had to have one.

How do I get into the disk managment utilities to create a partition on the drive? Should the OS automatically pop up with a 'new mass storage device found' message of some type?

930addict · 930addict's Garage

When I installed my new SATA drives OS X recognized them and popped up the disk utility to partition. If it's not being recognized try going to Applications-> utilities->Disk Utilities. If it's not there then oyu may have a problem with the drive or enclosure. I assume you are connecting via on board firewire or USB?

stomachmonkey · 09-10-2006, 11:18 AM

Problem with Macs which is actually a beni is they read and write just about any format, DOS, Fat32, Unix etc... so it may not always pop as unitialized.

Use Disc Utitlites.

May also be a jumper issue. All of my removable 2.5's use no jumpers at all.

DId you get a USB enclosure or Firewire. I have both and the Firewire is so much better then the USB versions.

I find the USB cases need 2 usb ports to supply enough power and then sometimes it's a pain to get the disc to mount.

Get one of these cases,

http://macally.com/spec/firewire/storage/25enclosure.html
Scott

HardDrive · 09-10-2006, 12:35 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by stomachmonkey

I find the USB cases need 2 usb ports to supply enough power and then sometimes it's a pain to get the disc to mount.

Scott

That was it. I bought a case that has a 'double plug' cord, so you can plug two USB connections into one outlet. This works fine on the PCs, but the mac does seem to feed enough power to make it work. I got a short USB extention to hook it to the other USB port, and it works fine. Why the hell is the other USB port on the other side of the box? I guess it gives you a choice.....

I formated the drive with an extended partition with journaling enabled.

I have not clue what journaling means in Mac land. Is this some sort of indexing service that maintains a directory of everything thats on the drive?

Thanks guys

stomachmonkey · 09-10-2006, 01:00 PM

Quote:

Why the hell is the other USB port on the other side of the box? I guess it gives you a choice.....

I think it's to give you options depending on if you are left or right handed, but that's simply a guess.

Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4 incorporates a journaled file system, which will automatically log any file modifications. If your computer crashes badly enough to require a restart (or a restart from a power failure), the OS will then use the journal to aid in fixing any disk problems caused by the crash.

Scott