I have 3 external hard drives that I have recently reformatted on my Intel iMac as OS X Journaled extended. All of them are Firewire with one also having USB2. They all mount on my iMac, but when I attempt to mount them on my G4 iBook they won't. Only the one with both Firewire and USB will and only when both cables are connected. I have never had this problem until I reformatted the HD's the other day. I have checked the ownership permissions and do not think it is a faulty firewire port. Both macs run osx 10.4.11 and I am fairly knowledgeable with OS X, but can't figure this one out. One HD is still empty and the other two are almost full as I am cleaning out the computers and preparing to reformat them. Any suggestions?
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External HD not booting
- Thread starter ksd20039
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Just mount them to the desktop. Eventually I will install linux on one of them but that will be some other time.
Okay, and are they even recognised in Disk Utility? Is the iBook plugged into the power adaptor at the time?
I attempted to reformat the empty on in MS-DOS, but still nothing on my iBook and the it's fine on the iMac.
Yes, everything always worked fine. I've never had a problem until now. Somehow I feel that the problem is coming from reformatting them all on the iMac, but I'm not certain.
Intel mac uses DIFFERENT PARTITION SCHEME than PPC macs.
Intel: bootable with GUID Partition Table
PPC: bootable with Apple Partition Map
Unfortunately not compatible. You probably have GUID as partition scheme for your externals since you formatted them on your intel mac.
Apple Partition Map can mount on all Macs. To format it that way using intel mac, select drive in Disk Utility, go to Partition / Options... / Apple Partition Map
Intel: bootable with GUID Partition Table
PPC: bootable with Apple Partition Map
Unfortunately not compatible. You probably have GUID as partition scheme for your externals since you formatted them on your intel mac.
Apple Partition Map can mount on all Macs. To format it that way using intel mac, select drive in Disk Utility, go to Partition / Options... / Apple Partition Map
I always thought that was only relevant for booting from an external drive, not simply mounting it. Learn something every day. 
Thanks guys, I was not aware of the options for partitioning. I never had reason to partition a hard drive for OS X, so I never used the partitioning option in Disk Utility, only the Erase option. Unfortunately, after checking it with my empty HD, it still will not mount of the PPC, so I will take both the iBook and an external HD to an Apple store in the morning and see what they say. I will post the outcome for any future problems like this one.
It is a bad FireWire port. Odd, since it stopped working right after the HD reformatting.
External HD not booting
Try a different FW cable. When a connection does not work, the port isn't always the problem.
Try a different FW cable. When a connection does not work, the port isn't always the problem.
Try a different FW cable. When a connection does not work, the port isn't always the problem.
I brought the iBook to an Apple store and they confirmed the bad FW port. I will network the iBook and iMac when I need to transfer data on my external drive for now.