Using an external drive with my iBook G4

I have a question. I had purchased an external Seagate drive. It is supposed to be compatible for both macs and pcs. The first time I used it was at School at the computer lab where the Macs must be of a higher system than my iBook because everytime I try to plug it up to my computer it never shows up on my desktop. I know its on because i can hear it working. Is there any way to make it work on both the macs at school and my own ibook? The macs at school are desktop computers not portable ones. Does that make a difference? Thanks so much.

Try resetting the USB ports on the Mac that doesn't
recognize it. To do that, disconnect all USB devices
and shut the computer down. Restart after a minute
and try the drive again.
John
Hi there,
This worked for me. But then I removed the USB connection and re-atached and it won't recognize it now.
PLease don't tell me there isn't away of just connecting and the mac reads it. I can't be expected to shut down everytime, am I?
Please help.
The external is 250 GB NTFS (with about 120 GB used). And has ALL my PC stuff.
as a side note I just got this iBook yesterday. I was told by all the mac supporters they never crash. But so far this one has "crashed" twice (I assume it is a crash. A little screen pops up telling me to shut down).

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http://www.anandtech.com/show/4577/airport-extreme-5th-gen-and-time-capsule-4th- gen-review-faster-wifi-/4
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The complexity with this idea is the software has to run from a Mac computer on your network.. so you need a Mac turned on, probably most of the day.
It isn't possible to partition the TC although you can create a image area.
The software would have to copy the material, that means all files to be copied, go from USB drive, back to the Mac, then back to the TC, and written to the drive. In other words you have just added Network congestion, although a proper incremental backup type software will not actually use a lot of capacity.
Finally it will be slow.. network drives are slower than internal drives. Well USB connected drive is much slower than the same drive connected directly to the computer.. and if the drive is connected directly to a computer it can be shared with the network.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4577/airport-extreme-5th-gen-and-time-capsule-4th- gen-review-faster-wifi-/4
Read carefully the speed of the USB drive plugged into the TC.

Re: Leone's post May 2014 about how to best use an external drive with Aperture

I am trying to find Leone who had a great post May 2014 to Diane. I posted tho same message as a 'Reply' to the Leone/Diane posts but then was worried it would not show up since that was some time ago so I decided I should post it as new. Apologies if it comes through twice. I am having trouble as indicated below:
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Hi Sandy,
I suggest taking a week or two to get to know Aperture better before proceeding. Aperture can do many things, and can do what you want. It's important to be specific about what you want, however. From what you've said, it appears that you don't yet know.
bybeeler wrote:
[1] I found this response to the question about Aperture and external hard drives from last May. I bought a WD My Book 4TB and need to back up photos I have in Aperture (many!) to free up space.
[2] I am a photographer and need to be able to plug the external drive in as needed, pull a photo out from the WD and back into Aperture to work on it if needed.
[1] A back-up is a copy of digital files stores on a separate device. A back-up is recommended because drives fail, and humans make mistakes. A back-up is not used to free up storage space.
[2] Aperture can be set up in many equally-usable ways. The program files reside (almost always) on your system drive. The data files can be anywhere you want them, as long as they are on locally-mounted drive(s). The main data file is your Library. The best place for it is on the drive that has the fastest throughput to your logic board. This is, in nearly 100% of machines, the system drive. But Aperture functions well with Libraries of secondary drives — internal or external — with sufficient throughput. USB-3 and Thunderbolt I (& II) provide sufficient throughput for using an Aperture Library on a secondary drive.
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— Cons: Must have drive with you in order to use your Library.
• Leave your Library on your system drive, but relocate your Images' Originals to an external drive.
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— Cons: You can't export (except Previews), Print, or make adjustments until your external drive is mounted. Significantly more difficult to administer, especially importing and backing-up.
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— Cons: Yet another level more difficult to administer.
If you are comfortable with the administrative overhead, the third set-up will be the most rewarding. Keep all _current_ Images Originals inside your Library, and routinely relocate the Originals of Images no longer current to the external drive.
In no case is it recommended that you at any time remove from your Library an Image (not the Original — the Image in Aperture) that you expect to ever use again.
HTH,
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I suppose I probably left on the "Organise the music into folders" option when I first plugged in the drive to my PB and the files have actually moved a bit. Would making sure that this was set on both machines be a food thing to do?
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M
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About Journaling: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107249
About Ownership: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh669.html
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No trouble for a few minutes, then I have to go out.
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I have an (Apple item, iMac,model etc) running on (OS X 10.7.4).   I have just purchased a Seagate (size, model etc) external drive and would like to use it for (list uses).   Then ask specific questions.
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Message was edited by: seventy one

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