Problems powering external HD. Help needed.

[garyb]

Hi
I have recently bought a Lacie Little Disk 160GB FW (portable H.D.). The problem is that whilst I can copy to it when it is plugged into my other Lacie external hard drive it will not work when I plug it into my Apple iBook. This is even with both USB plugs connected. The hard drive lights up and can be found on my desktop.
I can't however use it as a startup disk or view movies etc that are on it.
I get the feeling the iBook is just unable to power it.
As I say when connected my my mains powered desktop hard drive it works fine.
Any help appreciated.

[Gordy]

I would imagine your ibook is not providing enough juice via the usb ports. I would get a cheap powered usb hub as that will sort the issues.

[garyb]

It won't work on USB even with a powered hub.
It does however work fine with just the firewire lead, even when pluged just into my iBook.
Ummmmm?

[Gordy]

That's really odd. Have you tried it in another machine?

[artaxerxes]

You cannot boot from USB on the iBook. You can however boot from Firewire... at least under Tiger. It worked fine for me - with one caveat. My lacie came improperly partitioned to allow booting.

To allow booting you have to format the drive in a specific fashion...this will work only with PPC macs, [Intel Macs require a differing partition to allow booting]

# Launch Disk Utility. It's in Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.
# Choose the drive you want to format from the drive list on the left.
Be sure to select the drive's description instead of its name.
# Click the Partition tab.
If you don't see the Partition tab, you selected the drive's name. Click on the
description just above the drive name to reveal the Partition tab.
# Click the Options button.
# Select Apple Partition Map.
# Ok!