Mac book pro won't see NTFS drive

[Mark Deeble]

I've a Samsung 250 gb drive in a cru data-port carrier - in the si2K body is appears fine as a 'D' drive and I can record to it fine - however when I take it out and connect in to my mac-book pro via USB it simply doesn't see it.
I am running OS X 10.5.8 and have tried to find the external drive using disk utility and also in the About this Mac/ More info/ USB but no luck. I have tried rebooting with drive connected and disconnected and I have reformatted the drive to NTFS in the si2k body - but it still isn't recognized (?). I have 3 other drives in CRU carriers: 2 x 60GB SSDs and 1 x 160 GB Seagate all NTFS and all are fine.

[Rohan Dadswell]

It is probably a power issue with that drive - it's just not getting enough juice from the USB to run that drive. The CRU should have a 5volt input near the USB port. If you have got or can get a USB power cable all should be good. Otherwise you may have to muck around pulling the drive out of the mag.

I have had a similar issue - with the extra power all was fine.
Macs should have no problem reading a NTFS formatted drive but you will need an add on (MacFuze?) to be able to write to it.

[Bob Hart]

Mark.


Agreed with Rohan. You need 5VDC for the power supply mini-socket on front of the Dataport as well as the square USB. Dataports working on some computers from the USB cable alone may be the exception rather than the rule.

If you buy one of those little generic plugpacks with a slide-switched selection of voltages from about 1.5V through to 12V, make sure you tape over the little slide switch after selecting 5V so it does not get bumped to a higher voltage.

[Mark Deeble]

Rohan, Bob - thanks.
I have been using an external 5v power source as I have found most drives need it ( although not the SSDs?).
The drive is getting power as the green LED lights up and I can feel it spinning ( both with the power lead alone and with the USB cable and both together) but I don't get the read 'clicks' and it doesn't mount.
Back in the camera, I can see it and I can copy off it to another drive or USB stick via one of the camera's USB ports.
I can only think it might be the USB port on the front of the dataport carrier - as even if I reboot the macbook pro in Windows I can't see the drive - or am I missing something?
I have had an issue before with a connection between the dataport 'frame' ( the bit embedded in the camera) and the camera but this would appear to be the carrier itself (?)

[Bob Hart]

Mark.


I'm not sure what the rules are with macbooks but there are two things you might try if hotswapping is not forbidden. I don't like hotswapping but that is the way the SI2K itself does it, so it can't always be bad.

First of all, make sure that square looking USB plug is fully home in the front of the dataport. Sometimes they feel tight but will go that extra little thud to fully home if you put a little more pressure on.

If in doubt, try another cable. Yours might be a mismatch to the dataport. I have a black cable and a grey cable. The black cable once or twice has faulted out, maybe a plug connection. maybe a dry joint in the cable itself?


If a cable swap does not solve the problem, then try the following if hotsawpping is not forbidden :-

Power up the dataport and if it is a HDD, give it about 30seconds to spool up "before" you plug in to the macbook computer. Touch the outer shield of the USB plug to any metal body part of the macbook or to the socket shield first before shoving the plug in. I have seen sparks go across. The mains isolation is not good with a lot of appliances despite what the manufacturers will tell you.

If your USB is shared with other appliances like keyboards, mouses, network, try taking some of the those out of the system.

When you formatted the drive in your dataport, did you format by the long method or "quick-format" it?

NOTE - CLARIFICATION ADDED HERE.

To test the front connector of the dataport, shut down the camera if not already switched off, then dismount THE DATAPORT from the SI2K. Reboot the camera. Plug in your USB cable to the front of the dataport. Try plugging the other end of the USB cable into your spare USB socket in the back of the camera.

If it won't connect after about 60 seconds, unplug it, give 5VDC to the dataport through the front power input, then try connecting to the SI2K again. If you have had a failed connection before you gave 5VDC to the front power socket of the Dataport, you might need to power down the SI2K then reboot.

Mine is sometimes a bit strange like that.

This hopefully will establish if the front socket and cable is good.


That about expends my ideas, bright or otherwise.

[Mark Deeble]

Bob - thanks for your advice.

I have tried a couple of USB cables and reformatted the drive - both in normal and 'quick' mode. I can still not get it to life. If I attach the HDD ( outside the body) just to the 5v power lead then the green led lights up on the carrier - but it doesn't spin up until I attach the USB to the macbook pro - but that is as far as it gets. If I attach the drive to the camera body via USB cable with external 5v then nothing - despite rebooting with it attached - so I can only assume it is a bad USB socket on the carrier, as I think that just about exhausts all possibilities (!).

[Bob Hart]

It might just be a drive which Macs don't like. - ( The planets don't align, critical date in the Mayan calendar, something totally illogical, the miracle of modern electronics. )

Sorry we cannot arrive at a solution for you. You are probably stuck with copying from the camera itself to a courier drive via the camera's own USB.

If and when you do this, I strongly recommend that if you use the touch-screen, use it only to exit out of "DVR", open "my computer" and go only so far as opening the D: drive directory to find your files.

At the point of copying, use the "mouse" buttons on the side of the camera body to move the cursor and to click on the "copy" command. If you have allowed the touch-screen screen mapping to drift, chances are too great that you will click on the neighbouring "cut" command and you will be comprehensively screwed.

You will be committed to "paste" the files to another address and hoping to the good lord that that address has enough space or remains operative for the entire "paste" step.

You may find with some courier drives which should show as E:, that you have to open their folders directory by selecting "File" then "Explore" to get the tree to show itself. Maxtor One-touch USB-powered drives can be cranky. They also need their own original cord. Nothing else will do.

The little WD Elements USB-powered drives are more benign but these likely will require you to use the "File" "Explore" sequence to get into them.

This is most likely stuff you already know but there it is anyway. Please forgive any redundent comment.

[Mark Deeble]

Bob - thanks, no redundancy at all and all advice and help is much appreciated!
I can generally find my way around a Mac but Windows is a whole new game...
Up to now I have just tested that I can copy the files off, using a USB stick which works fine as I can just plug it in and it shows up quickly as an 'E' drive. A Lacie 500 GB bus-powered USB drive didn't show - but I will investigate the 'explore' option. Many thanks.

[Mark Deeble]

Finally traced the problem to the (new) CRU dataport carrier. I swapped the drive out to another carrier and it worked fine - so it must have been the USB socket on the carrier. That is the second out of four new carriers I have had problems with - PN 8531-3309-9500

[Bob Hart]

Mark.


This may be way silly. Sometimes the white cable I have is a bit glitchy in the socket. The blue one seems to be better.

The two screws in the rear of the Dataport cases can touch the little upright PCB inside the rear. There may be nothing it it but I don't like it so have have filed the end screws 1mm shorter so they can't touch and short out something or push the PCB out of alignment.

I also have a simpler dataport with no USB. It came with the docking bay for the editing computer. It is serialled 8511-5009-9500. There is space for two drives but the SI2K camera body can only see the lowermost drive, so the upper mount is wasted space. These carriers are apparently intended for RAID in other applications. The docking bay has two separate SATA connections for this purpose.

Andronico ( in Mexico ?? ) was examining if the SI2K body could be modded for RAIDed drives for uncompressed recording using the two-bay dataports. There is apparantly an unused RAID controller built into the camera's computer somewhere. Two of his Mini heads are on eBay so I guess he is moving on.

[Mark Deeble]

Thanks Bob

I've had a look at those two screws - but on this dataport they sit a couple of millimeters proud of the circuit board. I have also tried a couple of other USB cables so the problem must be somewhere in the socket or the circuit board - I'll keep it for emergencies!