[magneticpoet]

My Mac Mini/G4/OSX 10.4 is not recognizing my external hard drive, MiniStack. Anyone know what could be wrong?

[ibook_steve]

Maybe it needs to be formatted. Look for the drive in Disk Utility.

If you're saying that you were able to access it before and now you can't, try repairing the disk in Disk Utility. If it doesn't even show up in Disk Utility, you may need a disk repair program, like DiskWarrior, to recover your data.

Steve

[JKT]

Or you might need to reset the power management on the Mini - it is possible that e.g. a power surge caused the Firewire and/or USB ports to fail which a power management reset might solve. You could test for this by trying alternative devices plugged into the same ports as the drive, and using different cables (it could also be something as simple as a damaged cable).

[magneticpoet]

It doesn't show up in disk utility and it's not the usb or firewire cables. I don't think it's the power thing either because my other peripheral work and the external has its own power supply. But, just in case, how do you reset the power thingy?

[JKT]

It isn't the power of the drive that I am talking about, it is the power to the port within the computer into which you are plugging the drive - if the power management is corrupted or disrupted (e.g. due to a spike in current), it can prevent ports from functioning properly. Resetting the power management system differs for different make Macs. I would check the manual for your particular Mac, but I think the following are the instructions for the G4 minis:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2183