MPB does not mount USB external hard drive

I purchased a usb external hard drive (Buffalo 7200 rpm 320 GB) and plugged it into my my MBP and nothing happened. I had my techie friend come to help me, he could get the external hard drive to work on his mac book G4 (I think it was) but it would never mount on my computer. The computer recognizes it, it will show up on system profiler, but there is no icon on the desktop. Anyone have any ideas?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Aug 11, 2007 6:13 AM

21 replies

Oct 15, 2007 9:11 PM in response to cigame2

I have the same problem. I have a DigiBay external On The Go USB drive. It shows in Profiler, but not in Disk Utility or in Finder.

The CRAZY thing is, I can run VMWARE inside OS X, and it WORKS in XP!
This makes no sense! It works in VMWARE/XP and not in OSX even though... i'm in OSX awhile running VMWARE ---- ??

Is Apple aware that, according to cigame2, this seems to have started in 10.4.10?
Is there some way to manually mount the drive in terminal?

Oct 16, 2007 10:46 AM in response to sabotage79

After searching around, here is how I was able to fix the issue. I replaced some files from the 10.4.9 install package using Pacifist, following this guide under"Revert USB kernel extensions":
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20070824012114701

Be sure to clear Kernal cache with a tool like Oynx after following the guide. There are some easier steps on the guide you can try first, but none worked for me until I did the kernal extensions.

My external drive shows up now like it should!
Surely this will be fixed in Leopard?

Message was edited by: sabotage79

Oct 24, 2007 8:26 AM in response to sabotage79

having had the same problem i found the cause (in my case at least): while parallels is running, no usb device is mounting on the mac side. Quitting parallels et voila!

Oct 30, 2007 10:46 AM in response to japanshannon

I also observe the same problem. My external HDD, when plugged into my windows PC works fine, however plugging same into the USB port of my MBP, the external HDD is neither recognised nor mounted. System profiler does not even acknowledge its existence.

Oct 31, 2007 6:59 PM in response to japanshannon

Just a ME TOO. I have an Intel Mac Mini and I have the same problem with a Buffalo 7200RPM 250GB drive. Worked without a problem on my iBook G4 running 10.4.10, but will not work on my Intel Mini.
I have to shutdown and reboot to get it to come up and that doesn't even always work. Hope we see a fix in 10.4.11.

Nov 5, 2007 5:22 PM in response to Scott Griswold

Same problem. Got myself a western digital external HD. Unable to mount it on my MBP. But tried on other Macs and PCs, it can be detected. Help?

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MPB does not mount USB external hard drive