Mac freezes when trying to access external USB hard drive

[mauszozo]

I've got a G5 running OS 10.3.9. I've been working with video files all morning, going back and forth from a Windows machine to my Mac using a 300GB external drive with USB.

As of about an hour ago, when I connect the drive to my Mac I get the drive icon, but when I try to open it, I get a wait cursor and can't click anything. It stays like that until I power off the machine. The drive continues to work fine on my Windows machine. I've tried different USB ports on the Mac. Unplugging the drive doesn't do anything, the drive icon remains on the desktop and the wait cursor continues.

Any thoughts?

 

[techound1]

A computer's PMU (Power Management Unit) is relevant to:
sleep/wake issues
battery issues (such as not charging at all)
power-on issues
port issues (USB/FireWire ports appear dead)

Since the issue is with all of the USB ports, you could try resetting the PMU to see if it's systemic.

 

[mauszozo]

Thank you so much for the reply! I tried what you recommended, but it did not work. I did finally fix the problem by running a disk fix utility on a Windows machine. I guess in all the back and forth I must not have "ejected" the disk properly at some point and corrupted a file that the Mac was looking for.

Thanks again for taking the time to help!