"Because a USB device was drawing too much power from your computer, one or

I have a WD 500GB MyPassport portaple HDD which I have been using since December as a Time Machine drive. No problem until today when that warning came up. What changed? Same Macbook, same MyPassport, which were working together fine just this past Saturday.

You may have asked the drive to do something for which it required just slightly more power than it has needed in the past, nudging it just above the power limit of 500mA that can be provided by the USB port. Or perhaps something in the drive enclosure is beginning to fail, increasing its power demand. The chipsets used in WD external drive enclosures are just plain crummy — maybe that's why they're so cheap. People report more trouble with WD external drives in these fora than all other brands combined.

You can consider using a USB "Y" cable to connect your drive to two USB ports instead of just one. That should give it adequate power.

http://store.westerndigital.com/store/wdus/en_US/DisplayAccesoryProductDetailsPa ge/productID.106596600/categoryID.13095900

But for a surer remedy, I suggest opening the WD drive enclosure, removing the drive, throwing away the junk enclosure, and mounting the drive in one of these:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MOTGSU2/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MSTG400U2/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MOTG800U2/

The first two enclosures linked are for SATA drives, which I think is what's inside your WD enclosure. If it turns out to be an ATA/IDE drive instead, the third link will be a proper enclosure for it.

Many top users in these fora use and swear by these enclosures, and very few of them will buy a WD external drive.

everytime i plug my 5th gen ipod nano into my imac computer it says this!! it is really annoying. i have reset my ipod reset the something or other on my computer and it still says it. HELP!!!

Hi sarah, and a warm welcome to the forums.

It is not that we want to shuffle you around, but you may be better off posting in one of the iMac forums that deal specifically with your model of computer. Sometimes different models have different known hardware issues.

That said, is the nano working normally otherwise?

Have you tried plugging into other USB ports on the computer (with everything except for your Apple keyboard and mouse disconnected)?

Cheers

Rod

I'm having the same issue today... working on a brand new imac with snow lep 10.6.2... trying to install a HP C6150 and it keeps giving me this message. I have tried all ports and made sure the the printer all-in-one is connected to the wall for power and not only the usb port. Any suggestions? I need to get this thing installed...
Thanks in advance!

-designruby

Try using a different USB cable.

tried both I have... and all usb ports...

All right.

I have a 17in. MBP from late 2007. Recently this message pops up when I connect my LaCie Ext. Hard Drive.

Changing the cable with which I connect my computer to my hard drive fixed it.

Hope this helps someone.