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USB hard drive not mounting
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Aug 2006
Status:
Offline
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Lifetime Windows user, just got my first iMac. So far, so good, except I can't get this darn hard drive to mount.
It's FAT32, 250 gb, USB.
It works fine on my laptop's Ubuntu and in a Boot Camp installation of Windows. OSX just doesn't want to like it.
If I try running disk utility with the hard drive pluged in, it says "gathering disk information" and the circle-thingy goes round and round with apparently no end in sight.
I read something about OSX not mounting FAT32 drives > 128 gb. I don't have the page handy anymore, but I beleive it said it was for older versions (since this computer arrived yesterday, it's running 10.4.7).
At this point, I'd be happy to get everything off the drive and onto the mac (which has more than enough room to spare), reformat the external drive in HFS+, and dump it all back.
The problem's pretty general, so I haven't had much luck googling are searching the forums. Can somebody point me in the right direction here?
Thanks!
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Aug 2006
Status:
Offline
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A-ha - new discovery.
If I turn the power off while disk manager is endlessly 'gathering disk information', suddenly it stops. I get a list of all the hard drives, including the USB one. If I hit info, the info is all correct (including writeable: yes). Still, all the other options are grayed out. Even if I turn the HD back on.
Hope that helps?
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Brantford, ON. Canada
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I think OS X (10.4 only?) is having issues with external USB drives. My brand new 300GB drive does basically the same, so I have to return it for firewire I guess.
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Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: CT
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Offline
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I'm also having similar issues with a fat32 formated usb drive not mounting. Sometimes it mounts, sometimes it doesn't. I don't know what to do.
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Sep 2006
Status:
Offline
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I have the same issue with a G5 quad running 10.4. It will not mount a USB drive that I specifically formatted as FAT32 so that I could transfer files between mac and windows 
Drive mounts fine on windows and linux.
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Administrator  Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: California
Status:
Offline
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Check the manufacturer's website to see if a later firmware is available for the USB case. In the alternative, do you have a different case available? It's fairly easy to transfer a drive to a different case.
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Moderator  Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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Offline
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IME, Tiger works fine with external USB drives (using one for backups) but it will not support FAT32 partitions over 128 gigs (or 137 gigs as heretics and harddrive manufacturers count, ie with 1 gig= 1 billon bytes). Best way around this is to partition the drive into several partitions that are all below 128 gigs - that way OS X can read all of them.
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