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I just received a Western Digital Passport drive, USB, 120 GB.
I plugged it in my wife's iBook G4 and it mounts fine, each time.
I plugged it into my PBook G4 and it does not mount, I tried several times, both ports, I zapped the PRAM, etc. Neither Disk Utility nor System Profiler see anything on the USB bus. the USB bus works fine since I have a mouse and KB attached.
the drive light up, so I think there is enough power, the PBOOK is plugged in. I am puzzled. Any ideas?
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OK. so I search the WD support site and it appears that the drive does not get enough power. but both iBook and PBook provide 500 mA to the USB bus, which I believe is the USB standard. Now what the heck? WD sells an USB cable with dual connectors, i.e. you draw power from two USB ports. or I could get a powered USB hub. But that is against portability! If I wanted a bulky solution, I already had one, I wanted something simple and portable and got nada!
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[quote BigGuynRusty]FireWire.
BGnR
You're right. It was a good deal though, after google checkout.
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In my experience it is a random walk whether a bus-powered USB drive will work on any laptop, PC or Mac. You have to have a separately powered PCMCIA port, get power from two USB ports or a separate power source for the drive. Firewire always works.
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My aluminum PowerBook G4 can't power a 2.5" USB drive (at least, the one I tried). Just b/c the USB spec is 500mA, that doesn't mean that's all the drive needs (it might need more), and the iBook might overpower the bus, while the PowerBook just meets it (or exceeds it, but the iBook just exceeds it by more).
BTW, firewire doesn't "always" work, but it's much more likely. I have one case that works bus-powered on my PowerBook G4, but not on PowerBook G3. But it's the only case I've found that does that, and I've used a lot more firewire cases than USB cases.
