Powerbook G4 won't detect USB 2.0 external hard drive

I recently purchased a Toshiba USB 2.0 portable external hard drive. I have both 15' and a 17' Powerbook G4s that are running on OS X 10.4.11. When I attempted to connect the new hardware to each of the computers neither recognizes that anything has been connected. The external drive does not appear on the desktop, in disk utilities, or TechTool. Both computers have 2.0 USB ports and the external hard drive is compatible to a Mac, but I cannot figure out why it will not show up. I have tried all of the suggestions I could find in forums discussing similar problems such as trying to repair the permissions with the Disk Utility First Aid feature, resetting the PRAM, as well as resetting the PMU, but to no avail. When I connect the device to a Windows based PC it shows up immediately; however, when I try to see it using the Virtual PC side of my Mac I am still unable to visualize the drive. This problem is only occurring with external hard drives and not particularly just this brand--I have tried others and had the same problem. All of my other USB devices that I connect to these computers work fine. Can someone please help and tell me why my Powerbooks will not detect USB external hard drives. Thanks!

External hard drive enclosures can be connected to computers in any of several ways. USB is one; FireWire is another. Some enclosures offer several different connection options: they may have any combination of USB2, FireWire 400, FireWire 800 and eSATA ports. All G4 And G5 Macs have FireWire 400 ports, and can start up from an external hard drive that is connected to one of those ports. No G$ or G% Mac can be depended upon to start up from any external drive that is connected to a USB port, though it may happen in a few cases. Because a FireWire-capable drive is bootable, it's much more useful than a USB-only drive in any situation where a primary hard drive has failed or has become temporarily unbootable because of file or directory corruption.
Bare hard drives nowadays come in two platter sizes: 2.5" for notebook computers and 3.5" for desktop computers. The sizes and shapes of their outside casings are tightly standardized to make them highly interchangeable. They also come in two types: Parallel ATA, also called IDE, PATA, or ATA-5, ATA-6 or ATA-7; and the newer Serial ATA, or SATA drives.
External enclosures are made to accept either PATA or SATA drives — rarely both types. If you have an external drive with only a USB2 port, and you can see how to open the drive enclosure to reveal the bare drive inside, it may be to your advantage to order an empty FireWire enclosure and "transplant" your bare hard drive into it to get the benefits of higher speed, bootability, and adequate power that come with FireWire.
External hard drive enclosures are designed to hold standard-sized bare hard drive units — the same units that can be mounted inside a desktop or notebook computer. An enclosure contains a place to mount the drive, a circuit board or two that mediates between the drive and the port to which you'll connect a USB or FireWire cable, and in the case of a 3.5" drive, sometimes a fan for cooling.
Portable FireWire-connectable external hard drives seldom or never have the problem of insufficient power that plagues so many portable USB hard drives when they're used with Powerbooks. For whatever reason, Powerbooks' USB ports just can't put out enough juice to run most portable USB drives, while their FireWire ports are able to do so comfortably.

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Try some of the troubleshooting steps outlined below:
Troubleshooting an external hard drive
> Unplug the hard drive, wait a few seconds, and then plug it back in
> Restart the computer
> Unplug any other peripherals from the computer
> Plug it into a different USB port
If none of those steps work, see if it is recognized in Disk Utility.
Checking a disk with Disk Utility
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> Type the first few letters of its name into Spotlight. Select it from the results.
> Go Launchpad > Utilities > Disk Utility
> Go Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
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Austin

I have a Seagate Slim Portable 500 GB USB 3.0 external hard drive that worked great with my Macbook Pro 13" Retina but gets ejected and won't show files on any iMac.

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I just tried this, no luck...
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USB 3.0 External hard drive working only as USB 2.0

Hello all.
I have a MacBook Pro mid 2012 (specs below) which has two USB 3.0 ports. I have a Kingston USB 3.0 stick and a Toshiba 1TB USB 3.0 external hard drive. With Lion/Mountain Lion/Mavericks, both stick and hard drive worked fine, but since I updated to OS X 10.10 Yosemite, both work as USB 2.0 devices, with slow transfer speed and, in the case of the hard drive, it has a blue/white LED that indicates the mode (blue = USB 3.0 / white = USB 2.0) and it only lights up with white color.
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Hi jesusbet,
Thanks for visiting Apple Support Communities.
It sounds like the USB 3 ports on your MacBook Pro are not operating at the expected speed.
The first troubleshooting step I'd suggest in this case is to reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your MacBook Pro using these instructions:
Shut down the computer.
Plug in the MagSafe power adapter to a power source, connecting it to the Mac if its not already connected.
On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option keys and the power button at the same time.
Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.
Note: The LED on the MagSafe power adapter may change states or temporarily turn off when you reset the SMC.
From:
Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
If the symptom continues, you can also reset the PRAM:
OS X Yosemite: Reset your computer’s PRAM
These two hardware resets can resolve many unexpected behaviors that affect hardware on a Mac.
All the best,
Jeremy

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I am using the latest version. Currently re-installing final cut x which will bring me up to date.
Thank you for taking the time to reply. That makes a lot of sense.
However I still can't understand something... I only have 100gb free on my internal drive and I want to optimize a large amount of footage for my video projects. How do I save my projects to this hard drive if it is not showing up in my library?
I appreciate I am probably being very stupid and am very grateful of any insight!
Thanks,
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Hi,
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Why won't my iMac recognise my external hard drive?

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New computer won't find iTunes library on external hard drive

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Input/Output Error USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

I recently started having problems with an external hard drive setup that I did not have prior to trying to setup the drive to be compatible with Time Machine.
The hard drive enclosure that I have has 2 bays for two SATA drives. I have used this enclosure without any problems until I tried to get 1 drive to act as the backup drive for Time Machine and the other to be storage. I formatted them using Drive Genius. I used the option for GUILD or GUIL which it said was the better format for using with Time Machine.
The first problem I ran into since reformatting the drives is I got an "input/output" error the first couple times I connected the drive via USB to my Mac. I could still use the drives but I got weird errors every once in a while like "input/output error" or "device was not ejected properly" even though the device had not been unplugged.
Now the drives will not mount using OS 10.5.5. The drives show up when I open Disk Utility, but I cannot get them to mount. I have ran Disk Utility First Aid, and it says the drives are fine. There is one error that shows up when I run the "Repair Disk" feature. It reads "Invalid content in Journal". But Disk Utility also says "The volume was repaired successfully".
I have seen some posts when I do a search in google about this issue and it seems this is a known issue. Every suggestion I see says to insert your Tiger DVD and reformat the drive using that and the problem will be solved. The only problem with that is I have a lot of important files on the drive that I cannot lose. I had the files backed up until I moved them to the new drive a while back. Now I do not have a backup because I was in the process of switching to bigger drives and erased the old drives after doing so because everything was working fine.
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Thanks,
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I have similar problems with my USB external HD. Reformatting or repartitioning will not solve your problem. I've tried that 2 times already. The problem will reappear. My HD was running great until last month, when it suddenly without warning disappears from disk utility and the mac altogether. It not only dismounts itself, but also ejects itself, while still physically connected and the power is still on. The HD has its own power supply of course and is directly connected to one of the iMac USB ports. I have erased, repartitioned, disk verified, rebuild spotlight indexes, cleared PRAM and NVRAM, but nothing has solved the problem.
It is application independent, and not related to like iTunes as another post had suggested. Nothing to do with Mac applications. It seems to be USB related.
Messages in the Console seem to indicate something wrong with 'USB transactions passed their expiration point' and 'USB cannot enumerate something', but these statements are a bit cryptic to me. Perhaps an Apple system engineer can someday shed some light here.
thanks much for any assistance.

UserEventAgent won't let me eject my external hard drive, and other problems

I'm running a MacBook Pro (2008-ish model) running Mountain Lion 10.8.2 with 4Gb of RAM and 750Gb of internal HD (the original 250Gb seriously cramped my style), and UserEventAgent is acting all weird.
Because of that old 250Gb HD, I was in the habit of storing files I didn't need at the time on an external hard drive, a LaCie 500Gb connected by FW800 (probably not relevant). And lately, whenever I plug it in, I can't eject it without forcing it to eject.
Using the "list open files" command and searching for that drive [ lsof | grep LaCie ] reveals that UserEvent drops an immediate hook in it for some reason. This connection is immediate, and short of force-quitting UserEventAgent in Activity Monitor at the exact moment I try to eject that drive, I can't disconnect it properly without forcing it or shutting down completely.
In fact, looking at UserEventAgent's open files and ports in Activity Monitor, something just plain doesn't look right:
/usr/libexec/UserEventAgent
/System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/PlugIns/csparser.bundle/Contents/M acOS/csparser
/private/var/folders/td/hnt8krzc8xj63p001s61rg7r0000gn/C/mds/mdsDirectory.db
/usr/share/icu/icudt49l.dat
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/ACRRDaemon.plugin/Contents/MacOS/ACRRDaemon
/System/Library/KerberosPlugins/KerberosFrameworkPlugins/heimdalodpac.bundle/Con tents/MacOS/heimdalodpac
/System/Library/KerberosPlugins/KerberosFrameworkPlugins/LKDCLocate.bundle/Conte nts/MacOS/LKDCLocate
/System/Library/KerberosPlugins/KerberosFrameworkPlugins/Reachability.bundle/Con tents/MacOS/Reachability
/System/Library/KerberosPlugins/KerberosFrameworkPlugins/SCKerberosConfig.bundle /Contents/MacOS/SCKerberosConfig
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/AirPortUserAgent.plugin/Contents/MacOS/AirPortU serAgent
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/AppleHIDMouseAgent.plugin/Contents/MacOS/AppleH IDMouseAgent
/private/var/db/mds/messages/se_SecurityMessages
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/AssistantUEA.plugin/Contents/MacOS/AssistantUEA
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/AutoTimeZone.plugin/Contents/MacOS/AutoTimeZone
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/BTMMPortInUseAgent.plugin/Contents/MacOS/BTMMPo rtInUseAgent
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/BluetoothUserAgent-Plugin.plugin/Contents/MacOS /BluetoothUserAgent-Plugin
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleHDAHALPlugIn.bund le/Contents/MacOS/AppleHDAHALPlugIn
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/BonjourEvents.plugin/Contents/MacOS/BonjourEven ts
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/CalendarMonitor.plugin/Contents/MacOS/CalendarM onitor
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/CaptiveUserAgent.plugin/Contents/MacOS/CaptiveU serAgent
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/DiskUnmountWatcher.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DiskUn mountWatcher
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/EAPOLMonitor.plugin/Contents/MacOS/EAPOLMonitor
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/GSSNotificationForwarder.plugin/Contents/MacOS/ GSSNotificationForwarder
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/LocationMenu.plugin/Contents/MacOS/LocationMenu
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/PrinterMonitor.plugin/Contents/MacOS/PrinterMon itor
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/SCMonitor.plugin/Contents/MacOS/SCMonitor
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/alfUIplugin.plugin/Contents/MacOS/alfUIplugin
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.UserNotification.plugi n/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.UserNotification
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/com.apple.TimeMachine.plugin/Contents/MacOS/com .apple.TimeMachine
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/com.apple.bonjour.plugin/Contents/MacOS/com.app le.bonjour
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/com.apple.cfnotification.plugin/Contents/MacOS/ com.apple.cfnotification
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/com.apple.dispatch.vfs.plugin/Contents/MacOS/co m.apple.dispatch.vfs
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/com.apple.fsevents.matching.plugin/Contents/Mac OS/com.apple.fsevents.matching
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/com.apple.iokit.matching.plugin/Contents/MacOS/ com.apple.iokit.matching
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/com.apple.launchd.helper.plugin/Contents/MacOS/ com.apple.launchd.helper
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/com.apple.locationd.events.plugin/Contents/MacO S/com.apple.locationd.events
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/com.apple.notifyd.matching.plugin/Contents/MacO S/com.apple.notifyd.matching
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/com.apple.rcdevent.matching.plugin/Contents/Mac OS/com.apple.rcdevent.matching
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/com.apple.time.plugin/Contents/MacOS/com.apple. time
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/com.apple.universalaccess.events.plugin/Content s/MacOS/com.apple.universalaccess.events
/System/Library/UserEventPlugins/com.apple.usernotificationcenter.matching.plugi n/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.usernotificationcenter.matching
/System/Library/Extensions/IOHIDFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOHIDLib.plugin/Con tents/MacOS/IOHIDLib
/private/var/folders/td/hnt8krzc8xj63p001s61rg7r0000gn/C/com.apple.LaunchService s-036501.csstore
/usr/lib/dyld
/private/var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_x86_64
/dev/null
/dev/null
/dev/null
count=1, state=0x2
/dev/io8log
/Users/<username>/Library/Assistant/sync_flag
->0xc1a78b298c30c655
count=0, state=0
count=0, state=0
/private/etc/com.apple.screensharing.agent.launchd
/private/etc
/private
/usr/local/bin
/usr/local/bin
/usr/local
/usr
count=0, state=0
/private/var/db/PanicReporter
/private/var/db
/private/var
/private
count=0, state=0
/private/var/db/GPURestartReporter
/private/var/db
/private/var
/private
count=0, state=0
/private/etc
/private/etc
/private
count=0, state=0
/Users/<username>/Library/Services
/Users/<username>/Library
/Users/<username>
/Users
count=0, state=0
/Library
/Library
count=0, state=0
/Applications
/Applications/Utilities
/Applications
count=0, state=0
/Library/Caches
/Library/Caches
/Library
count=0, state=0
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent.launchd
/Library/Preferences
/Library
count=0, state=0
/Applications/Fun/Steam.app
/Applications/Fun
/Applications
/Volumes
/Volumes
The repetitions (I mean seriously, who needs three open connections to /dev/null?), and the multiple instances of "count=0, state=0", suggest that UserEventAgent is getting bad info from somewhere.
If I can track down what's making UserEventAgent imitate an overly amorous octopus, maybe I can straighten out this mess. But I wouldn't be surprised to find that this list has picked up funky smells and bad habits from all the earlier versions of OS X I've run.
Help? Please?

Please read this whole message before doing anything.
This procedure is a diagnostic test. It won’t solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
Third-party system modifications are a common cause of usability problems. By a “system modification,” I mean software that affects the operation of other software — potentially for the worse. The following procedure will help identify which such modifications you've installed. Don’t be alarmed by the complexity of these instructions — they’re easy to carry out and won’t change anything on your Mac.
These steps are to be taken while booted in “normal” mode, not in safe mode. If you’re now running in safe mode, reboot as usual before continuing.
Below are instructions to enter some UNIX shell commands. The commands are harmless, but they must be entered exactly as given in order to work. If you have doubts about the safety of the procedure suggested here, search this site for other discussions in which it’s been followed without any report of ill effects.
Some of the commands will line-wrap or scroll in your browser, but each one is really just a single line, all of which must be selected. You can accomplish this easily by triple-clicking anywhere in the line. The whole line will highlight, and you can then either copy or drag it. The headings “Step 1” and so on are not part of the commands.
Note: If you have more than one user account, Step 2 must be taken as an administrator. Ordinarily that would be the user created automatically when you booted the system for the first time. The other steps should be taken as the user who has the problem, if different. Most personal Macs have only one user, and in that case this paragraph doesn’t apply.
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
When you launch Terminal, a text window will open with a line already in it, ending either in a dollar sign (“$”) or a percent sign (“%”). If you get the percent sign, enter “sh” and press return. You should then get a new line ending in a dollar sign.
Step 1
Copy or drag — do not type — the line below into the Terminal window, then press return:
kextstat -kl | awk '!/com\.apple/{printf "%s %s\n", $6, $7}'
Post the lines of output (if any) that appear below what you just entered (the text, please, not a screenshot.) You can omit the final line ending in “$”.
Step 2
Repeat with this line:
sudo launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.(apple|openssh|vix)|edu\.mit|org\.(amavis|apache|cups|isc|ntp|postfix|x)/{print $3}'
This time, you'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning not to screw up. You don't need to post the warning.
Note: If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before taking this step. If that’s not possible, skip to the next step.
Step 3
launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.apple|edu\.mit|org\.(x|openbsd)/{print $3}'
Step 4
ls -1A /e*/mach* {,/}L*/{Ad,Compon,Ex,Fram,In,Keyb,La,Mail/Bu,P*P,Priv,Qu,Scripti,Servi,Spo,Sta}* L*/Fonts 2> /dev/null
Important: If you formerly synchronized with a MobileMe account, your me.com email address may appear in the output of the above command. If so, anonymize it before posting.
Step 5
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to get name of every login item' 2> /dev/null
Remember, steps 1-5 are all drag-and-drop or copy-and-paste, whichever you prefer — no typing, except your password. Also remember to post the output.
You can then quit Terminal.

Time machine won't connect to my shared external hard drive connected to my airport utility

I connected my hard drive directly to my iMac and have backed up my system. Ive since connected the external hard drive to my airport utility. I can save documents to my hard drive wirelessly however when I've tried to back it up again I'm unable to do so. The drive is visible when I go into utility settings I just can't back up to it. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Officially, like Bob said, it's not supported by Apple at all. Unofficially, it is really hit/miss for most people but may be worth a shot if you've got a spare afternoon to try it out.
As an anecdote, I had a first-generation 802.11n AEBS and it did not work for me at all. However, a few years later, I upgraded to a 3rd Gen AEBS (Dual-Band), it has worked just fine. In fact, it recognizes the drive as a Time Capsule backup.
My guess is it has or had something to do with converting Ethernet/Wi-Fi––>Router––>USB––>SATA (HDD) whereas the Time Capsule is simply Ethernet/Wi-Fi––>Router––>SATA (HDD). The Time Capsule is an ideal setup but if you've already got an AEBS and don't need two routers, it may be worth a shot.
I'm using a Western Digital 2TB "green" drive with a cheapie Acomdata USB 2.0 enclosure between an iMac (ours) and a Macbook (hers). I still back my personal laptop up manually simply because of the tradeoff of speed vs. convenience. For instance, our iMac is wired via Gigabit Ethernet to the AEBS while my wife's Macbook is always wireless (via 802.11n). The difference in backup speed for either of them is rather indistinguishable but the initial backup takes more than a few hours depending on how many GB of data you have. Hooked up directly, the backup is a fraction of time in comparison. Therefore, the point is: If you regularly make LARGE backups (i.e. Virtual Machines, Videos, etc.), it's worth it to backup locally. Otherwise, if your backups are rather small (i.e. Text docs, a few songs, pictures, etc.), it's a wash.
The idea of NAS for Time Machine backups is really nice but hardly ideal if you're routinely backing up large files (or equally large changes to them).

Why won't my Extreme recognize an external Hard Drive?

Just bought a new Apple Airport Extreme (my first Apple product and not happy) and connected an external Hard drive to it via USB but I can't get my PC to recognize it. I can see it when I log into the extreme under utilities but that is it. I tried 3 different hard drives, 2 are in FAT32 and the larger one is NTFS. I followed Apple's instructions under disk sharing and still nothing.
I would greatly appreciate any advice to get this working.

Good evening.
Only drives that are formatted in FAT32 or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) will be compatible with the USB port on the AirPort Extreme. NTFS and exFAT are not supported.
Unfortunately, we have few Windows users here, and I am not one of them, but one of the Apple Support documents below provides 3 methods for PCs to connect to a drive at the AirPort Extreme. The other provides general information about format compatibility.
Hopefully, one of the PC guys will post soon to provide additional information.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1331
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2426
I believe that you have 90 days of free phone support with a new Apple product, so you might want to explore that route as well.
http://www.apple.com/support/contact/

Why won't my mac recognize an external hard drive?

I purchased an external hard drive to back up my mac. When I plug it into the USB ports, the computer does not recognize it. I've tried all of the USB ports on the computer. I know the drive is okay because my laptop does recognize it.

How do you know it's not recognized and how is it formatted?

Powerbook G4 won't detect USB 2.0 external hard drive

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