external SimpleTech Hard drive issue....

+purchased a SimpleTech hard drive+

Look up user reviews of that USB HD and you'll find that *it's notorious* for having an extremely *failure-prone USB controller board* which rarely outlasts the 12 month warranty. Don't bother getting a warranty replacement - the controller board inside it isn't worth the postage, and your data/photos is on the actual HD inside the case.

The good thing is that all your stuff is still on the HD. Carefully force open the plastic case at the seam, and remove the entire HD. Afterwards you simply unplug the useless USB controller board from the SATA connector at the end of the HD, and the hard drive will look just like all other 2.5-inch SATA notebook hard drives. Install it into a better quality external case and you're all set.

I saw one of these Simples for sale real cheap during a pre-Christmas sale, read the reviews, went back and bought it to immediately remove the HD from inside the unit (without even bothering to use it), then installed it into my MacBook, reformatted it, and it's been working great for the past month. The HD inside is excellent brand-name quality, by the way:)))

Message was edited by: myhighway

All of a sudden the drive will not mount on the desktop.

USB drives do that sometimes.

Use the FireWire port. FireWire drives ALWAYS mount.

Similar thing happened here. My dad purchased a SimpleTech hard drive to store a bunch of family photos. After he uploaded a bunch of photos, the drive stopped appearing on the desktop. He can't tell me if there was anything in particular that happened to cause the change. In any case, I got the drive from him and I'm trying to recover our family photos, since he didn't back up the files anywhere else (I know, I know...). The drive won't mont on the desktop, and I can't see it in the Disk Utility either.