Why won't an external drive connect with my iMac?

I recently tried to connect a Seagate Backup Plus 5TB external to my iMac and every time I try starting up, I get a message "You need to restart your computer".  (This message shows up in 4 languages.) I tried this previously with the same type of drive and Seagate told me to send it back because it appears the drive is corrupt.  I traded it in for another drive but get the same results.  I currently have another Seagate drive attached to my Mac and it works flawlessly.  I have had NO problems with my Mac to indicate the computer is bad.  I would appreciate any suggestions.  Thank you in advance.

Is the OS on your daughters system where the drive works the same as on the iMac where it causes the OS to crash? You used the same cables when you ran it on the other system, correct? If you still have access to your daughters machine it would be interesting to se how the drive is formatted. Not sure it would tell us much but it would be nice to know.
At this point if it were me I would reinstall the OS and see if that makes a difference. It's relatively easy and to be honest if you had Apple look at it it is most likely what they would do first. We could go back and forth with crash logs and all but an OS reinstall is really your next best step. As long as you do not do an erase of the disk before the reinstall you'll not affect your data, only  the OS bits will get rewritten.
Having said that things can always go wrong so having a backup before doing this is always a good idea.
regards
BTW your system and OS version was never stated. Just noticed your profile says 10.6, is that true? What model is your iMac? The drive is USB 3 and while USB 3 is usually backward compatible with USB 2 if you are really  running  SL I'm not sure how that fits into the picture. What was the OS Version of your daughters system?

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