Ibook does not recognize external drive.

Hi,
I have a G3 ibook running 10.2x and it won't recognize my maxor external drive which was formatted fat32. All other macs I'd tried can read it. I have installed the software (for backing up) and when its running it can detect the drive, but the finder will not show it. Is there a driver or an update I can use?
Thanks
IBOOK G3 Mac OS X (10.2.x) 600 mrtz

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
FAT32 formatting is not ideal for backing up. Unfortunately you will only be able to use it for data file backing up. Many applications rely on resource files and keeping the same filenaming conventions and permissions to run smoothly in Mac OS X. FAT32 does not observe Mac OS X's conventions for this. If that does not matter to you, and there is no data on the drive you want to preserve currently, use Apple's Disk Utility to reformat it. If there is data you want to preserve on it, find out if it is readable by a PC and offload that data to another drive, and then reformat it with that Mac. It may be the drive requires a specific firmware update to work in 10.2, and that you may only be able to get from the manufacturer. Though usually Disk Utility in any version of Mac OS X will give it its blessing when you erase the drive.
Edit, if you want it to be readable by a PC, and be a solid format for backing up both applications and data files, PCs can read HFS+ with MediaFour's MacDrive:
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6/

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