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February 23rd, 2012 Question by leonardobarajas@sbcglobal.net: What software can I use to read a external harddrive to a mac notebook?
I’m posting this for a friend of mine he has a mac notebook and a external harddrive which I think he uses on another labtop, when he hooks it up to the mac it doesnt read it. He was told of a software called Paralles would fix the problem and it would read the external harddrive. Anybody know either software or another fix that will work? Thanks!
I think it is a USB, from what he said it doesnt even read as if the external harddrive is plugged up but if he connects it to his other notebook (non mac) it picks it up and he can get access to his files, I’ll have to get some more info. from him
Best answer:
Answer by PrettyEskimo
Is this a firewire or USB drive… are you sure he does’t need to plug it in. Usually there isn’t enough juice to power these drives especially a notebook powering it fro the USB or firewire bus. Parallels is really only for running the programs if it was a windows drive. But the mac can easily read and see the files, just may not be able to run them. Can you see the drive when you plug it into a Windows PC?
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i dont understand why it wouldn’t work. some external HDs have two usb connections on one wire (plug into the ext HD and two to plug into the mac). what i do sometimes is plug in both into a mac so that it would read. unfortunately there is not enough juice to power ur ext. HD to the mac.
how old is the mac? some old macs don’t support usb2 connections. that might be the case. recent mac computers shouldn’t basically have any problemI reading an external hard drive or what ever that hard drive may contain inside, but they may not be able to open or run its files or softwares if they are not mac compatible. you should be able to see the external hard drive’s icon right below the “My Apple” icon on your mac’s monitor. I work with both mac and pc computers at home and work and haven’t had any problem connecting external hard drives or usb storages to my macs. I also have parallel software installed on my mac at home. Parallel is a good software if you want to run windows xp and windows based softwares on your mac and nothing more.