[Solved] USB Drive Not Recognized

[ewrrod]

While I'm fairly proficient with a Mac, I'm pretty new to the Hackintosh world and just recently, with the help of a PC-Experienced friend, successfully built a "CustoMac Mini Deluxe". The process was not a hard as I thought it would be but I definitely would have been stuck a few times if not for the help of my PC friend.

ISSUE:
I'm attempting to connect my LaCie Fuel drive via USB but the Hackintosh does not seem to see the Drive. I plugged it in via USB and nothing happens. The drive has successfully booted/loaded on other Apple Machines.

Here's what I've tried:

1) Rebooting - Several times
2) Tried ALL USB ports on Hackintosh
3) LaCie Fuel Does not appear in Disk Utilities

Not sure if this is a "Driver" issues as I thought USB Drives would simply load.

Thoughts?

Apologies if this si not the correct place to post this.

 

[BreBo]

@ewrrod, please update your profile (personal details) with your build (Motherboard, CPU and Graphics Card).

Profiles need to contain at least your primary system to assist others with helping you.

 

[ewrrod]

Turns out my "CustoMac Mini Deluxe" does not like the Micro-B USB Cables (I think that's what they are called).

I tried inserting a regular Micro USB Cable in (leaving the smaller portion of the port exposed) and it worked. Strange but as long as it works! Would still be curious to know why. Thoughts?

 

[kiiroaka]

I think you got lucky. In my case it was a matter of two things: the on board chip in the HDD case and the fact that I had to format it on a Windows machine to NTFS or HFS+ on my Linux machine. Lots of times drives are not seen if they are not first formatted.

In your case you have to try a different cable. Same happened to me on another drive - would not work with the USB 3.0 cable, but when I changed the USB 3.0 cable it worked fine. In your case it's probably a fit problem, where one pin isn't making contact, probably because it gets lifted upon full insertion.

http://pinoutguide.com/PortableDevices/micro_usb_3_connector_pinout.shtml

So, don't be surprised if you're only getting USB 2.0 speeds out of it.

My suggestion is to try another USB 3.0 micro cable.

 

[crawlem]

Thank you for posting this - I have exactly the same problem and your workaround solved it for me too!