(Happy New Year to everyone on this site.
Nice to be back, if still wounded.)

I have a Lacie 1TG external which works fine with my Mac Pro.
When I try to connect it to either my old ibook or a Dell Latitude portable using a USB lead they just will not recognise it.
Any suggestions?

The drive has to be formatted for Windows (MS DOS FAT32) for both the Mac and Dell to recognize it. You may also wish to check if the file system you are using is compatible with the iBook. Apple has changed the default file system in recent years, so drives formatted on new Macs may not be backward compatible - especially with computers of the iBook era.

If you format for Windows, all your computers should recognize the disk, but performance will be slower. Then again, performance suffers on USB hard drives no matter what you do.

Very many thanks for that helpful and lucid response.

by the way, how to I find out what the default file system is?

I don’t believe it.

Just tried to switch on my LAcie 1TG external HD and it won’t even register on my Mac Pro. Making a funny sound as thought it is struggling to boot up then it gets going but no show.

The only thing that was done to it last night was my girlfriend took out the mains power plug from the wall because, rather like some weird dog if you ask me, she can hear the high pitched noise it makes.

Me and computers are doomed

Sounds like a power supply failure (the brick). LaCie drives are notorious for that failure. Contact LaCie and see if they will replace it for you.

The light on the brick lights up as does the light on the front of the disk.

In order to get it to stop its strange hi-pitch whirring I simply used the other firewire 400 connection (these lacies have two of the; a USB @ and a firewire 800 or some such combination) and it worked straight away the way it always has.

So, would you bother to trouble Lacie with this?
my main worry is that I am still a couple of weeks away from clearing up the disk so as I can use it for time machine back-ups to the 4 internal disks of the Macpro

martinp - 19 January 2009 01:19 PM

Very many thanks for that helpful and lucid response.

by the way, how to I find out what the default file system is?

You’re welcome.
To find out about what file systems are available, check Disk Utility in your Applications/Utilities folder.

Thanks.

Tonight I had the same problem with the Lacie 1TG. So I swapped the mains power brick, using the one provided with the other 500 GB lacie external that I have and it worked.
Watch this space…..

This is pretty standard. It works, goes intermittent, then fails. Brick puts out power, but one of the voltages is bad.

Tyanks Intruder.

So it is more likely to be the brick than the disk. Funny that. My partner could not sleep the other night becuase of that hi pitch noise she (alone) could hear from afar. That is why I unplugged the power brick. When I put my ear next to it I too could hear the noise. I thought it unusual for one of those things to make a noise. I’llget onto the shop I boought it from.

Just to let you know: I contacted Lacie and they said they will send me a new power brick next week. So thanks for the help and suggestions

I think they have a whole warehouse full of them.