a new wrinkle here.

upon start up, 3 out 4 times this week, the g4 does not see the medea drive. after i restart the mac about 3 times (the raid drive also) it will finally recognize it.

checked cables, used disk utility, what next?

thanks

What type of raid is it SCSI, FireWire, or software? Have you repaired permissions lately? Have you installed any recent OS upgrades and what version OS are you running? Have you run Disk Warrior?

SCSI
WIHIN THE LAST 2 WEEKS
NO UPGRADES
OSX
DO NOT HAVE dICK wARRIOR.

DID PHYSICALY MOVE ENTIRE EDIT SUITE LAST WEEK, BUT HAS WORKED FINE UNTIL THIS WEEK.

JUST CAME UP, REPAIRING AND VERIFIYING ALL DRIVES AS I WRITE.

Did the repairs make any difference? Does it say what was repaired? What version of OS X are you using, 10.2.4, 10.2.5 etc.?

REPAIRS MADE NO DFIFFERENCE.
MY FPC3 IS JUST A SPINNING BEACH BALL ON EVERY ACTION I TRY TO PERFORM.

JUST HAD TO PHSICALY SHUT DOWN COMPUTER AND UPON RESTART IT DID NOT SEE THE RAID.
SOMETHING REALLY BAD IS HAPPEINING HERE.

OSX 2.4 I THINK.
I WENT TO THE DISK WARRIOR SITE.
MIGHT AS WELL BUY ONE AND HAVE THE IT GUYS HERE INSTALL IT.

Don't know about SCSI but sometimes you need to 'reset' Apple's firewire. Completely unplugging the computer for about 15 minutes will sometimes fix balky firewire.

Gary, please don't type in all caps it is hard to read and in internet etiquette considered rude, like shouting.

I would contact the RAID manufacture and ask their advice. The software that came with the RAID may need to be reinstalled. Disk Warrior will fix directories etc. You should upgrade the OS to 10.2.6 It has better SCSI support. Use the combo update from Apple's site.

Disk Warrior will need to be run from the install disk. Have you run FSCK -Y yet? It might find some errors and fix them.

sorry about the caps.
will check the raid and the osx update.

If the drives aren't seen at start-up there are usually two causes. Either a software problem (bad files, or directory) or the drive(s) aren't spinning fast enough. The software that came with the RAID should have a SCSI mounter included (SCSI Probe) that will mount the drive. If the SCSI probe can't find the drive usually it's a hardware problem. Can you hear both drives spinning?

yes, it seems according to an the engineer i had move the system and reassemble, come check out this problem yesterday and he seems to think it was just to damn hot (the mac).
upon his suggestion, i moved the mac and placed a fan in front of it and no problems so far.
I hope this solves it.