PCMCIA external hard drive

Question

PCMCIA external hard drive

I have an external hard drive with the PCMCIA interface. It works with a PC laptop just fine. When I plug it into my PCMCIA port on my titanium powerbook, however, the drive does not appear in finder, or in the disk utility. The light on the drive comes on, and an icon appears in the menu bar in the top right corner on the screen. Clicking this icon pulls a menu with 3 lines: PC card manufacturer (in grey, so I can't click on it), PCMCIA ATA/ATAPI adapter (also in grey), and power off card (in black, so it's clickable).

Anything I can do to make this hard drive usable?

PowerBook G4 Titanium 1GHz 1GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Mar 9, 2008 9:36 AM

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Answer 1

Hardy Geer

Level 4

3,166 points

Mar 9, 2008 12:03 PM in response to VictorGurarie

It needs power which the PCMCOA does not supply.

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Answer 2

Mar 9, 2008 2:54 PM in response to Hardy Geer

It works with a PC, though. So it gets the necessary power there. And the "on" light on the disk comes on when plugged into the powerbook. So it gets at least some power.

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Answer 3

Hardy Geer

Level 4

3,166 points

Mar 9, 2008 3:07 PM in response to VictorGurarie

I have used such drives with my PowerBooks and they worked well when provided their own power.

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Answer 4

Mar 10, 2008 12:57 PM in response to VictorGurarie

Hi,

Did you get an install disc with the PCMICA drive? If so, you may have to install it first for the system to recognize it *as a drive*. These cards come in many 'flavors' and once the device is known by the system (any of them, even at different times) it will see it and know what to use it for.

Enjoy

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Answer 5

Mar 29, 2008 12:04 PM in response to The Bohemian

There was no driver supplied with this PCMCIA drive. However, I found a very simple solution to this problem. I cracked open the PCMCIA case, got the actual drive out, threw out the PCMCIA case. Then I bought a firewire hard drive enclosure for $9. Now everything works just fine.

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Answer 6

Mar 29, 2008 3:10 PM in response to VictorGurarie

Hi,

Interesting how you did that...

Not working as a PCMCIA but will as a Firewire... Same computer but a different PORT.

Glad you got it working.

Enjoy

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Answer 7

eww

Level 9

53,052 points

Mar 29, 2008 7:04 PM in response to VictorGurarie

Yes, it works because the FireWire port provides more power than the CardBus slot. And the FireWire drive can be made bootable, which makes your solution even better, Victor.

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