PowerBook G4 won't find USB External Drives

I have a PowerBook G4 running Tiger. I'm trying to use my external hard drive. When I plug into my laptop using FireWire 400 it works fine, but when I plug in via USB it doesn't find it and shows no trace of it. My USB ports work fine with other peripherals and even thumb drives, but I've had this problem working with multiple kinds of externals. Any way I can find them?

Hi, are these Bus powered drives or do they have their own Power Supply?
Why would you want to use USB over the faster Firewire Port, do they only have one FW port & you need to use 2?
Oh, forgot, a very few have a USB<->FW switch.
Message was edited by: BDAqua

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