[0ldman]

USB hard drives and USB thumb drives are natively supported in Windows ME, 2000 and XP.

It is a 3.5 inch external hard drive with its own power source, correct?

On some older systems, the USB ports are not delivering the proper voltage to handle some devices. I don't think another operating system would work any better, I'm betting on hardware.

I do agree, it would probably work better with an older OS, but I'd sacrifice a finger before ever installing Windows ME on purpose. Windows 98SE uses the same drivers as ME and has far less issues. Personally, I'd probably stick with Windows 2000 as long as it isn't horribly slow.