I am using a usb 2.0 hd enclosure.
It came with a cable with two heads.
One for data, one for power.
I used an extension cable to plug it into both ports on my powerbook.

After so many minutes of copying files to it I get I/O errors on the desktop.

I thinkt he problem is better understood from the answer which was to plug the power head into my windows laptop to get power and the data head into the powerbook. All problems went away.

Sooooo.....Is something in hardware or software putting this drive to sleep?
Can it not get enough power from the powerbook?
Can I bump the amount of power it gets or is it a sleep issue?

Thanks


[ Edited by bash64 16.01.2013 - 16:49 ]

I've an external hard drive that my Powerbook unable to see, due to the feeble power of the USB slots. If there's a fix other than bemoaning Apple build design/quality control, and getting a powered external drive I don't know.

I was thinking Poseidon could provide more power.
There are adjustments for that.
Another odd thing was that I had this sata drive in a usb 2.0 full sized case that has its own power and was using an ide->sata converter board to hook it up internally and I still got wierd failures to read the drive.
But that was another issue I think.
It is working perfect right now and I have been backing up to it for over 30 minutes now.



[ Edited by bash64 16.01.2013 - 17:35 ]

I have the same kind of problems with external usb hd and the Poerbook

What I noticed is, that when using an 2.5 external usb drive (160 GB) it works fine, I only use the usb cable, no extra power cable, and it doesn't block or something, I can copy without problems, though when I use an external usb 3 hd (500 GB), it has a 3 to 2 cable, I need to connect it to an hub which has a electrical power and then the hub to the Powerbook in order that it works. So it seems that high capacity hd use to much power. Perhaps external usb SSD hd would work?

USB HDs with their own PSU (mainly 3.5" drives) do work just fine on my setups (with one exception with some very thin usb cable which came with the hd it did the same, but drive worked when I replaced that thin cable with good quality USB cable).

But with one 2.5" drive with no external power I had the same issue with you. IIRC it did the same with Macs as well as Peg1. I haven't tried any other 2.5" drives or any Poseidon settings...

My drive is a 500gb. Perhaps it is the size, and it is newer and needs more power.
I tried a 256gb samsung SSD and no deal. Still needs two cables. However I don't know if I did use two cables and copied to it that it would eventually loose connection. It had my windows boot on it and I did not want to delete anything.