How to get an external hard drive to work on my iBook?

Question

I have an old iBook G4, and I recently bought a newer macbook.  I want to transfer all of my stuff from my old computer to my new one, but there's a problem.  I have a Toshiba external hard drive that I bought a few years ago to use on my mom's iMac.  It mounts on her computer, but for some reason, it won't mount or do anything on my iBook.  Whenever I hook the hard drive into one of my iBook's usb ports, nothing happens.  I have no clue what to do to get it to work.  Does anyone have any ideas?

Answer 1

You can find the instructions here:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15189318#15189318
Because Migration Assistant isn't the ideal way to migrate from PowerPC to Intel Macs, using Target Disk Mode, copying the critical contents to CD and DVD, an external hard drive, or networking will work better when moving from PowerPC to Intel Macs.  The initial section below discusses Target Disk Mode.  It is then followed by a section which discusses networking with Macs that lack Firewire.
If both computers support the use of Firewire then you can use the following instructions:
1. Repair the hard drive and permissions using Disk Utility.
2. Backup your data.  This is vitally important in case you make a mistake or there's some other problem.
3. Connect a Firewire cable between your old Mac and your new Intel Mac.
4. Startup your old Mac in Target Disk Mode.
5. Startup your new Mac for the first time, go through the setup and registration screens, but do NOT migrate data over. Get to your desktop on the new Mac without migrating any new data over.
Copy the following items from your old Mac to the new Mac:
In your /Home/ folder: Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures, and Sites folders.
In your /Home/Library/ folder:
/Home/Library/Application Support/AddressBook (copy the whole folder) /Home/Library/Application Support/iCal (copy the whole folder)
Also in /Home/Library/Application Support (copy whatever else you need including folders for any third-party applications)
/Home/Library/Keychains (copy the whole folder) /Home/Library/Mail (copy the whole folder) /Home/Library/Preferences/ (copy the whole folder) /Home /Library/Calendars (copy the whole folder) /Home /Library/iTunes (copy the whole folder) /Home /Library/Safari (copy the whole folder)
If you want cookies:
/Home/Library/Cookies/Cookies.plist /Home/Library/Application Support/WebFoundation/HTTPCookies.plist
For Entourage users:
Entourage is in /Home/Documents/Microsoft User Data Also in /Home/Library/Preferences/Microsoft.
Credit goes to Macjack for this information.
If you need to transfer data for other applications please ask the vendor or ask in the  Discussions where specific applications store their data.
5. Once you have transferred what you need restart the new Mac and test to make sure the contents are there for each of the applications.
Written by Kappy with additional contributions from a brody.Revised 4/17/2011
You need to read the entire User Tip for warnings about what may be incompatible, but that is the gist of how to get things over. (To start up your iBook in FireWire Target Disk Mode, hold down the t key during startup.)