PureGin.org

I've spent a good part of the day trying to copy my Macbook's startup disk onto a 160GB Seagate 7200.2 SATA2 160GB 2.5" drive in a StarTech InfoSafe USB 2.0 SATA drive enclosure. I bought the drive (a pair of them actually - one for the laptop, the other as a backup drive) from Generic Technology, definitely my favorite little computer store in Vancouver. They have great prices, actually know what they are talking about (surprisingly rare these days), are always friendly and responsive, and go the extra mile (take returns without a fuss, spend time to help with troubleshooting, call back promptly).

The strange thing is... I can't actually get the MacBook to recognize the external drive... it is detected fine on my girlfriend's PowerBook G4, and (after a bit of fussing) on my Intel MacMini, but nothing could make it show up on the USB tree in System Profiler - even a flash memory reset, and full boot. Grrr.

I thought that perhaps the issue might be power - the USB spec allows devices to draw only 500mA, and the Seagate Momentus 7200.2 drive draws 620mA. However, even with the goofy double-headed USB cable, which is supposed to allow draws of up to 1A, the drive spins up but does not register.

I finally brought the Macbook to the shop, since there have been a number of other issues bothering me (built-in iSight stopped working, trackpad is a bit wonky, battery life is down to 1.5 hours). It's just out of the 1 year warranty period, but I had the three year extended warranty (I've always bought this for my laptops and never regretted it).

I'm now without a laptop for a week, which is kinda frustrating... fortunately I have the Mac Mini which I referred to, and which is turning out to be really quite nice to work with, after I put in another 1GB of RAM.