July 2006 - Posts

Problems initializing Barracuda drives in NexStar GX enclosures under OSX

I had a problem initializing and partitioning a new Seagate Barracuda 400GB drive with the NexStar GX (NST-370GX) external USB enclosure.  Neither my G4 MacBook Pro or my Mac Mini Dual core could initialize or partition the enclosure/drive.  I could however hook the enclosure up to my XP machine, format it using NTFS, and access (read) the drive on my Mac Mini just fine.  I didn't check it on the laptop though after formatting it using XP.  This still was unacceptable.

After doing some searching online, I discovered this post on 123macmini.com:  

http://www.123macmini.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2629

where the post points out that the NexStar GX enclosure is a rebranded Macpower M9-LX.  Then I discovered on the Macpower site:

http://www.macpower.com.tw/products/hdd3/m9/m9lx

that the enclosure is not compatible with any Seagate Barracuda drive greater than 160GB.  Doh!

After swapping out the Barracuda drive for a 300GB Western Digital drive I could then initialize, partition, and use the enclosure on my Mac Mini without any problem.

I was using OSX 10.4.7

I hope this helps others out there with the same configuration.

Ctut