External hard drive recognized on Mac book but not Power Mac

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I have a Power Mac G4 and a mac book G4, and today I have been getting a disk insertion error when ever I plug my hard drive into my Power Mac.

It was working Just fine a couple weeks ago on my Power mac, and the same hard drive is working fine on my Mac-book G4.

It seems like this is a problem with my Power Mac rather than my hard drive, but I am not sure. Am I correct, and does anyone know how I can fix this problem?
 

chscag

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I believe you mean iBook G4 not MacBook G4 since there is no such machine.

If the drive mounts OK on your iBook but not on the Power Mac, we can assume the drive is functioning and the fault is with the Power Mac. Have you tried another connector on the Power Mac? Also, what does the disk insertion error say? And does the drive mount at all on the Power Mac even with the error?

Regards.
 

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I have a Power Mac G4 and a mac book G4, and today I have been getting a disk insertion error when ever I plug my hard drive into my Power Mac.

It was working Just fine a couple weeks ago on my Power mac, and the same hard drive is working fine on my Mac-book G4.

I'm sorry...but there is no such thing as a MacBook G4!

- Nick
 

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I believe you mean iBook G4 not MacBook G4 since there is no such machine.

If the drive mounts OK on your iBook but not on the Power Mac, we can assume the drive is functioning and the fault is with the Power Mac. Have you tried another connector on the Power Mac? Also, what does the disk insertion error say? And does the drive mount at all on the Power Mac even with the error?

Regards.

Sorry, it is a PowerBook G4...but anyways here is the message I get "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer" Then it gives me the option to initialize, ignore, and eject.
Also the drive does not mount at all on my Power Mac and I don't have another connector.
 

pigoo3

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Sorry, it is a PowerBook G4...but anyways here is the message I get "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer" Then it gives me the option to initialize, ignore, and eject.
Also the drive does not mount at all on my Power Mac and I don't have another connector.

I'm slightly confused...does the external hard drive not mount properly on both of your Mac's...or just one of them?

Thanks,

- Nick
 
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I think I may have figured it out.
I was looking online on a forum regarding my hard drive, which is a Western Digital 250GB passport and they said you should always use the USB cord that came with it. Which I have not on my Power Mac because I lost it and am using one from my card reader. So maybe that is why it is not Working? Seems a bit far fetched to me but what do you guys think?

As for why my hard drive works on my Power Book I forgot to mention I am using a y cable because I need to use both USB ports on my Powerbook to get enough power for the drive to function.
 

chscag

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I don't think using the original USB cable that came with the WD drive is going to make any difference at all.

But you did give us a clue when you said the drive required the use of a "Y" cable with your Powerbook in order to give it enough power to spin up . Have you tried using the same "Y" cable on the G4? I suspect it also may not be getting enough USB port power from the G4.

Regards.
 
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no luck using the y cable on the power mac. I'm thinking it has to be some command or something that got screwed up on my Power Mac. Maybe I need to put my start up disk in?
 

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