Portable hard drive works in boot camp, not on os x

hi all,
upgraded to macbook c2d cos i had this same problem with my ibook g4.
have a usb 2.0, portable drive with a usb Y-wire. it mounts properly sometimes but doesnt read or write to it reliably. in fact, it always ends up hanging and i m left with a spinning rainbow and having to yank it out of the ports.
it is a fat32 drive and works with my boot camp installation very well ... but totally gases out on os x. happened for my ibook g4 too.
at this rate, i might just have to end up working out of boot camp -gasp!-
anyone got the same problem or have a solution to this?

This is tough, but I'm gonna have to suggest something that could be rather unpleasant. You will need to backup your data unless you want to lose it.
Initialize it to HFS+ with the Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. FAT32 just isn't reliable for heavy-duty file transfers on the Mac. Maybe for little Word documents and PDFs on little USB flash drives, but for anything serious, stick to HFS+ Journaled.
And quit fooling around with USB 2.0 devices when there are cheap FireWire alternatives (they might cost a little more, but they're often worth it). FireWire 400 is faster that USB 2.0, it can often be daisy-chained, and self-powered devices only require one FireWire port.

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