iBook G4 and external hard drives

[jengal4]

Hi,

I just purchased my second external hard drive here in Korea where I'm living, a Philips USB 2.0 2.5 inch 250GB for my iBook G4 (Mac OS X version 10.4.11) and am frustrated because i don't know what i'm doing wrong. First of all, the box says that it "supports IDE drives up to 250GB" - what is an IDE drive?

Secondly, when I attach the hard drive to my computer, via USB, the icon does appear on my desktop, but then when i try to click and drag files into it, it says "(this file) could not be added because (this hard drive-in Korean) could not be modifed." agghhhh! isn't that the whole point? to modify the hard drive by added files to it?

I tried going to my Finder and dragging files into it there, and it seems to add them ok (the green "+" sign appears) but then when I click on the hard drive icon to see what files are there now I can't see anything. There only appears a folder called "System Volume Information" and when I click on it there appears a black icon that says under it, "Mount Point Manager Remote Database." What the heck does that mean? When I click on that, an empty, blank window pops up.

I don't know how external hard drives should look like because I've never had one that i could figure out. Aren't these things supposed to be easy?

Thanks for your help!

Jennifer

[VirtualTracy]

With the drive connected, launch Disc Utility which is in the Utilities Folder within the Applications folder. Pressing Command + Shift + U in Finder, is a keyboard shortcut to the Utilities Folder.

You should see your Ext HD in the left collumn. Click on it and have a look at what it tells you at the bottom section of the overall window next to "Format:".

Your Phillips Drive is possibly formatted as NTFS (New Technology File System); the standard file system of Windows.

Here is a handy link to what comes next:

Formatting & Partitioning a Hard Drive in OS X - Tiger and Leopard


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