I have recently purchased an external usb hard drive and it won't mount on my Powerbook G4 . I have looked through several other places listing issues, but it does not resolve my issue. The device is powering up and indicating that it is receiving enough power (it is a bus powered device). The ports are working and my usb flash drive has no problems. The device does not show up in system profiler or disk utility. I have repaired permissions on my system and tried it from a reboot. Still no luck.

The device (Smartdisk FireLite 80GB USB portable hard drive) is intended to be used on both Windows and Mac OS X. It operates correctly in Windows.

How can I get the drive to work?

You say "it operates correctly on OS X," but that seems to contradict your problem. Please explain.

Sorry, it should have said "works in Windows." I corrected the post.

Is the drive formatted correctly? I'm no expert, but some formats work on both platforms but others will only work on one or the other.

The Firelight is sold for Mac and PC use and should work straight out of the box. Reformatting it for Mac use is a good idea just as long you don't want to use it to transfer data to/from a PC.

Run Apple's Disk Utilities and see if it is listed in the drives on the LHS of the window. If it is then click once on it to select and try the mount button at the top of the window and if that fails look at the bottom of the window for the "Mount Point". This is the Unix path that the disk should mount from. There is a blue underlined text here for the disk name. It's a hot point so click on that and the disk may mount. Also if the disk can be seen by Disk Utilities then running the verify check would be a good idea.

The drive does not show up in disk utility

It's probably faulty then, take it back for a replacement.

again, as stated in the question, the drive is not faulty it works on windows computers. I took it to another PPC mac and it didn't show up. I tried a couple of drives that a buddy uses on his windows laptop. The first one was the same situation, didn't mount, didn't show up in disk utility or system profiler. The second one didn't mount or show up in disk utility, but showed up in system profiler. A third, desktop drive, which uses external power, mounted without any issues.

If you bought it for the Mac and it does not mount then it does not work as purchased so take it back. Just because it mounts on a PC box does not matter, you can't use for the intended purpose it was sold for.

I do find this very surprising as the Firelite is meant for the Mac and to run powered from the USB port. With your tests with other Macs it seems that the drive is pulling too much power for the USB port. These ports will fold down to protect themselves if presented with too high a current draw or a short circuit in the extreme.

I once pulled a 2.5" drive from a dead G4 titanium powerbook, put it in an external case intending to use it as a portable drive for my new Ali G4. Did not work on the new PB as there was not enough power available on the USB port. The drive just chattered all the time and did not mount. Connect the same drive to my G4 tower with an add on PCI USB2 card and it works like a charm.

So, if you can, take the drive back to the shop, with your PB and show them it does not work and get it changed or a refund.

i have been using and developing for Macs since 1991. I have 4 USB2 external mini drives and they work F A N T A S T I C A L L Y when they get plugged into Pismos running 10.3.9 or 9.2.2.
I purchased a 1.6ghz Powerbook Running 10.4.7 and guess what... NON of them work. Lights came on, drive doesn't spin. I think there may be a power issue. Haven't tested using a Powered USB Hub yet... If anyone else has the problem - speak up!
the drive formatting problem is a red herring. CtrlAltEsc has it right - not ENUFF POWER.