Disk Ute, Spotlight, External Drive issues

osX10.4.11 last gen G5 iMac. These are just the things I've noticed so far. Yesterday when I woke up and went to my computer it had a problem getting out of sleep mode and I had to do a hard shutdown. I went to run my Disk Utility and it just sits there saying "Gathering Disk Information..." with that fancy spinning thing below it. I just ran it a week or two ago just fine. My external WD drive will not appear on the desktop. My 4gb flash drive will not appear on the desktop. My upper right corner Spotlight field will not return any results. Does anybody have slightest bit of light they could shed on my troubles?

One more thing...the Software Update progress bar won't go past roughly 15%...

Sounds like trouble brewing in "River City". Time to break out your Tiger install DVD, boot the G5 with it and go thru the Apple Hardware Test. Also run Disk Utility from the DVD and do a verify and repair for the hard drive.

Make sure you have a valid backup of everything on your hard drive before proceeding with any trouble shooting.

Regards.

What's "river city"? I did attempt to run Disk Utility from the CD last night with no different results. I will attempt the hardware test. Thank you.

I got Disk Utility to run after I removed my flash drive. I ran the apple hardware test. On my mass storage I received error code 2STF/8/3: S-ATA BUS 0 - MASTER. I've already figured out what that is. Now if I could just get it to see this external drive I could backup my data.

Any tips on getting my mass storage to be recognized again? I know the external drive works fine because I tested it on my PC.

HELP! I need to get this external to be recognized so I can back up my internal.

bump again

Hello? Is this thing on? I don't believe NOBODY has the slightest idea. Help me out.