why won't my ibook (g3 800mhz, 640mb ram, OS X 10.4.11) recognize any external hard drives?

Hi Ronda,

I got my External to work shortly after posting my original post. I figured I would post my solution in case anyone else is facing the same thing.

I could not find any trace of the hard drive on my mac but i figured out the problem was lack of power. I upgraded my external's enclosure from one that used one plug (data and power on one usb port) to one that used two plugs on one cable (data on one plug, power on another) and it properly powered my drive and I was then able to find it in Disk Utility and format it to work. It is formatted as Mac OS Extended (journaled). It has functioned properly since then. As far as using firewire vs. USB, I (at this moment, at least) have no need to boot from the external, so i don't see the need in using it. However, firewire is pretty new to me and I have never used it before so if there are other benefits to using it over usb, i would love to know. Especially since my external currently takes up both of my USB ports unless I use a hub or plug the power part of the cable into a USB wall charger or something like that to free the other port up.

Thanks,

Geoffery