External hard drive is now invisible

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1.Can't erase invisible Time Machine folders from external hard drive

I've been using an external firewire hard drive for Time Machine backups
from a Leopard laptop and for storing other files from a Tiger desktop
computer. I want to free up the space used by Time Machine as I now have
another drive for Time Machine backups. 

I deleted the visible Time Machine folder by dragging it to the trash.
However, this did not free up any disk space. Activity Monitor shows I
only have 10GB left on a 300GB partition even though I've only got
around 160GB of files stored there. I have since found an invisible and
locked folder on the drive called .HFS+ Private Directory Data which
seems to be taking up the remaining space. It looks like the backup of
the entire laptop drive. The folder contains dozens of other folders
named dir_ followed by a seven figure number. In those folders are files
recognisable from the laptop.

I've used a couple of utilities to try and make it visible with no
success. One option is to back up the other files on the disk and wipe
the whole disk but that would be very time consuming. 

Any suggestions how I can get rid of the folder?

2.Resizing a hard drive using an external drive?

I don't have enough space on my system drive to resize my virtual pc
host drive. So is it possible to do this using an external harddrive?

I'm guessing VPC insists operating on the drive where it currently is
but if I symbolic links to the external drive is it possible to take
advantage of the space that way?

3.Toshiba 80G hard drive in Pismo and boot from external drive

I just installed a Toshiba 80G hard drive in a Pismo (Powerbook G3 
Firewire). Everything works fine except that I cannot boot the machine 
from an external firewire drive anymore.

If I press option at startup, Firewire drives do not appear as a choice 
and the watch cursor never turns into an arrow.

If I use Startup Disk to choose an external drive as the startup disk, 
the choice is accepted but the boot process freezes on a grey screen 
with no icon in the middle.

The machine has the latest firmware (4.18f5).

Both options worked just fine with my previous drive (IBM 30G).

4.invisible external usb 2.0 drives

Hello, after my Dell bit it two weeks ago, I decided to make my next 
laptop a powerbook G4.  I'm trying to connect my old dell laptop drive 
to the mac as an external drive.  This is now in a usb 2 housing, by 
Norwood.  (Bought it new, stated on the box compatible with macs and 
pcs.)  I also have another external drive, also in a usb 2 housing by 
iogear, that I would use with the dell.

Currently I can't get the g4 to even see these devices.  When I connect 
them to the usb ports, the drives just click continually, they don't 
spin up, and no device icon appears on the g4 desktop.

My goal is to get these drives readable by both the G4 and pcs (I still 
have several pcs at home, and use them in my daily work).

Things I've tried to solve this:

1. Verified both drives actually work.  They do.  I used them on a 
Windows XP computer this morning, no problem.

2. Looked into partition filesystem compatibility.  I've read that new 
macs can read/write fat32, and at least read ntfs.  The iogear drive was 
already fat32, but the dell drive was partitioned several times with 
ext2 and ntfs.  I tried destroying the mbr on the iogear drive by 
running fdisk /mbr on it and destroying, recreating and reformatting 
with fat32.  When that didn't work, I tried (on both drives) destroying, 
creating, and formatting on a WinXP system.  Both drives now have 1 
fat32 partition each, but the mac won't see them.

3. Considered partitioning compatibility.  I read on the web that macs 
might not see multiple partitions on external hard drives.  Regardless 
of whether they do or don't, both drives now have only one primary 
partition.

4. Hardware compatibility.  The Norwood housing, again, explicitly 
stated mac compatibility.  I looked up the dell drive model on the web, 
Toshiba MK4062 or something, and found pages explictly stating 
compatibility with powerbooks G3 and G4.  The iogear housing drive is an 
IBM Travelstar, don't have the model number handy (sorry).  I wasn't 
able to find the iogear housing model (GHE125U) on iogear's site, looks 
like it's phased out, but I'd be surprised if their design was so odd 
that macs couldn't communicate with it.

5. Apple support.  I'm glad to discover that the level of support it 
seems I'll get from Apple will be the same I got from Compaq with my 
first Win98 box.

6. Apple's software update.  System version is currently 10.3.8 (7U16).

So this is the overall picture: two working drives, no problems on 
Windows boxen, that I'd like to connect to my new G4, but which won't 
even show up as devices when I connect them.  I don't think there are 
any incompatibilities anywhere.  I'm guessing it has to do with 
something at the head of the disk, like the mbr, which is confusing the 
G4, but damned if I know how to fix it.

Help!!

5.Invisible External USB 1.1/2.0 FAT 32 Drive

 From MacOS X (10.3.7), I can no longer access my FAT 32 file system, 
which previously worked without a hitch.

It is not the hardware. OS 9.2 and Linux can both read and write to the 
file system without a problem.

Downgrading will probably not help - 10.3.0 (install disk) cannot see 
the drive.

The disk shows up in the Disk Utility, but cannot be repaired due to an 
'I/O Error'. It cannot be mounted, and is not visible in the Finder.

Any suggestions?

Thanks
George

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