External HD not mounting, Question on "Repair Disks" results

[cmykgrl]

I have a 500gb Seagate FreeAgent external HD and a G4 Quicksilver that's running version 10.4.11 I hadn't had any problems with the external HD with it up until the last month. Every so often it would disappear from my desktop. I'd unplug and plug the power cord and USB, and sometimes I'd have to restart the computer, but it would always end up working fine.

Today it disappeared and I can't get it to mount. It's showing up on the disk utilities. I clicked "repair disks" and I got this message in the dialog box:

Verifying volume “disk1s1”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Invalid node structure
Invalid B-tree node size
Invalid node structure
Invalid B-tree node size
The volume needs to be repaired.

Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit


Verifying volume “ACDJRT”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Invalid node structure
Invalid B-tree node size
Invalid node structure
Invalid B-tree node size
The volume needs to be repaired.

Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit


2 HFS volumes checked
2 volumes need repair

What can I do?

 

[cmykgrl]

The external HD is partitioned, I don't know if that helps anyone.

 

[Sun Baked]

I'd say, the drive is failing.

The vanishing drive may simply be the times the drive stopped working.

Those errors usually also tend to show up when the drive is dying, typically when the drive is being used and stops in the middle of a drive action.

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The failure to mount now is likely the drive file structure being scragged enough to stop working. Might be able to fix it and get enough time to recover the files.

If it was an internal drive, it would be giving you a flashing ? mark about now.