Ibook not recognizing external HD

I have an ibook g4 i.42 ghz and a western digital external hard drive that is only about 2 years old. Recently my ibook began to refuse to start up while the hard drive is plugged in via firewire (the hard drive can operate via usb also, but i need those ports for other things and firewire is faster). This had been going on for a while, but just the other day when i plugged in my external my ibook isnt recognizing it at all, even though its plugged in and the power is clearly on. Sometimes it shows up but i cant access any of the files on it, and itunes freezes when i try to open it (my whole itunes library is on the external for the sake of my hdd). I'm wondering if my hard drive has just run its course and is dead (great!) or if my computer is acting up. Any insights are greatly appreciated!
Jon

Hey saturn,
.. western digital external hard drive that is only about 2 years old. .. my ibook began to refuse to start up while the hard drive is plugged in via firewire .. Sometimes it shows up but i cant access any of the files on it, and itunes freezes when i try to open it (my whole itunes library is on the external for the sake of my hdd). I'm wondering if my hard drive has just run its course and is dead (great!) or if my computer is acting up.
Oddly enough I have a WD external FireWire 400 hooked up to my dual 1.2 G4 tower here. It's a 2407A and it's power supply died about a year after I got it. I have it running w/ the supply from an old Mac SCSI external and it's been fine for the last few years but last week it disappeared from my desktop. I looked at the FireWire bus under system profiler and in red letters it said the bus couldn't be read. I immediately pulled all FireWire connections and the profiler went back to normal (nothing connected). I found that the WD was pulling power through the FireWire cable and probably causing that bus to crash. With all cables pulled I shut down the WD external and it's supply. I then restarted the WD external and once it lit up and initialized I plugged it back into the Mac and viola it was there like normal.
So this experience just adds to my negative feelings toward WD and their general wonkyness.
I'd back up your iTunes on another drive.
Also we were talking about this around here a while back and someone said that the average lifetime of a hard drive is 3 - 5 years however a certain percentage of new drives will fail within 3 months. I think the number was 3 - 5%.
Richard

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Message was edited by: lisuhhx

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Ibook not recognizing external HD

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