Why won't my MacBook recognise my external hard drive?

I've just upgraded to a new MacBook.
I have a Maxtor Mini4 external hard drive which I used with my old iBook G4 (running OSX 10.4).
When I connect the hard drive to my MacBook it isn't recognised (it doesn't appear in Finder and the MacBook doesn't acknowledge the existence of the hard drive in any way).
I've downloaded the Maxtor software and installed it successfully on the MacBook.
Any ideas on why the MacBook doesn't recognise the hard drive? (the hard drive is powered by USB - it has no external power cord).
I still have my iBook and it continues to recognise the hard drive, so there is no problem with the drive.
Thanks
Nick

Mac Medic ([email protected]) wrote:
Are there two USB plugs connected to the wire coming out of the drive? Do you see the drive in your System Profiler? Even if it doesn't mount, it should show up in there.
I second that suggestion as the first thing your should look at. I had a SimpleTech drive that worked off of one port on a certain PC, but didn't mount with a single plug on any of my Macs. It always showed up in the USB Tree in System Profiler although I'm guessing it gave up trying to mount after sampling the power output.
The USB ports are likely to be and sometimes there are enough differences in the power output of two USB ports that a bus-powered hard drive can work in one but not the other. In general it's because a bus-powered device doesn't properly work with a standard spec 2.5W USB port.

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Why won't my MacBook recognise my external hard drive?

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