external hard drive no longer connected?!?!?!

[veeco3110]

today my mac for some reason or another froze. well not froze but acting very sluggish. figured the 4 gig of memory would have solved that.((running only 5 programs mind you))

so i do a hard restart of the computer((pressing and holding the power button)) and when i come back my external is no longer there. hasnt been connected all day!

its a western digital 500 gig hard drive. i disconnected everything on it and re instaled it. nothing. i just get the spinning light in the front. bought it in december of 07.


any ideas of what could be wrong or what i can do to fix it???

 

[waw74]

are you able to see it with disk utility?

 

[veeco3110]

nope not being recognized by my computer at all...

for those familiar with the WDs the circle on the front is spinning. if i power it off i can hear the hard drive spin up. i still hear the fans going at a nice soft wizz. its just not coming up on disk utility or anywhere on my computer.

 

[fhall1]

got another external drive you can try on the Mac? Have a PC around you can try to plug the drive into?

 

[veeco3110]

Nope only computer is my mac. It lights up. Acts like it's loading. Then that's it. Doesn't connect nothing. Any programs to get my pictures off it. That's all that I want