I have a couple of cheap, no-name 2.5″ hard disk USB enclosures with me that haven’t worked with any of my Macs since time immemorial. They made weird noises and flashed lights when I plugged them into either my Powerbook or the 20″ Intel iMac. I also shrugged it off thinking “oh these Macs are under powered” (( I do remember having some success getting my Powerbook to recognize the disk by using one of the 2×1 USB cables and inserting both of the connectors at one end into the Powerbook )) and grabbed the nearest Dell to transfer the data. (( no need to rub it in, I am embarrassed enough admitting it in public! ))
Until this morning. I upgraded to 10.5.8 and later when I was going through the release notes I saw this innocent looking line:
Improves compatibility with some external USB hard drives.
Immediately I popped in my cheap, no-name hard disk enclosure (with the hard disk in it, of course!) and yes, the iMac detected it. I am still running Tiger on the Powerbook so have no way of verifying if it works likewise.
Macs have truly broken the final frontier as far as I am concerned!