How to use external hard drive on my old mac?

I am preparing my old mac (G5) for recycling and want to back up and erase my files on an external hard drive. I have used the external hard drive once on my macbook pro and when I connected it on the old mac, it's telling me it cannot read all the files. It also isn't showing on the desktop so I'm unable to back up the files. What do I do? How do I get the external hard drive working?

What is the make & model number of the external HD?
Try plugging in the external into a different port on your computer.
Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility
Start up disk utility & see what this application says about the external hd.
You should have a backup of your data … even on a new machine.
You need an external Firewire drive to boot a PowerPC Mac computer.
I recommend you do a google search on any external harddrive you are looking at.
I bought a low cost external drive enclosure. When I started having trouble with it, I did a google search and found a lot of complaints about the drive enclosure. I ended up buying a new drive enclosure. On my second go around, I decided to buy a drive enclosure with a good history of working with Macs. The chip set seems to be the key ingredient. The Oxford line of chips seems to be good. I got the Oxford 911.
Has everything interface:
FireWire 800/400 + USB2, + eSATA 'Quad Interface'
save a little money interface:
FireWire 400 + USB 2.0
This web page lists both external harddrive types. You may need to scroll to the right to see both.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

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