Can't get it to work

Question

I've exhausted everything with my LaCie 1TB drive connected to my G5 iMac:
• Formatting the partition to Apple Partition Map
• Formatting to GUID (just in case)
• Plugging the drive directly into the iMac
• Trying the other Firewire port
• Connecting via a FireWire hub
Nothing works. The initial back up process is painfully slow. It then either backs up the entire drive or stops somewhere randomly and starts "preparing" again.
The time when I did have a successful backup, I had 3 hourly backups and then the need for a 130GB backup was called for. How I changed over 100GB of data in an hour is beyond me. It was "preparing" that one for ages too.
The thing is, I can move files to and from the disk suing other methods: Finder, Carbon Copy Cloner and so on. It just seems to be Time Machine that's failing. I can only suspect that there is some communication failure between Time Machine and the drive (or whatever OSX uses to talk to the drive).
I have read the posts here, and have tried the suggestions. For some, TM works, For others, it doesn’t. I'm one of those people for whom it's borking at every attempt. It seems that people are having issues with LaCie drives. I note with interest that in the Leopard guide video Apple posts, the drive being uses appears to be an Iomega device. Maybe I should have bought one of those instead?
So I'm giving up with it.

Answer 1

In order to use the Bluetooth options for synching, you need to be using a Bluetooth adapter that uses the Microsoft Bluetooth Stack, not WIDCOMM. A lot of Bluetooth adapters use the WIDCOMM drivers and the Desktop Manager won't work with that.
With the second issue, you would need to connect your device to the computer in order to install software. I recommend picking up a USB cable from any electronics store.