Failed external HD won't mount. Can't see it's TM files.

[rufhausen]

I have a 320GB OWC FW800 external drive that I use for iTunes, iPhoto, etc. It's backed up to Time Machine on a 1TB external drive. The 320 GB drive has failed and OS X cannot repair it via Disk Utility and tells me to re-format. That's fine except I'm leery of doing that until I can verify that everything I need off of that drive is safe in TM. However, since I can't mount this drive anymore, it's not showing up on any of my restore points in TM either.
Am I going to have to just re-format the drive and name it the same as before for it to just show up again in TM in order to restore?
I don't know why it should matter if I currently have that drive mounted or not in order to see the files from that drive that should be in TM.
Thanks for your help.

 

[spinnerlys]

Have you looked into the backups.backupdb folder on the external 1TB HDD if you can find anything there?

PS: It's its, not it's.

it's = it is
its = belonging to

 

[rufhausen]

Yes, I can see the drive I call "media" from there and just do a copy once I re-format the now untrusted drive.
Thanks for the tip.

And yes, I tend to do that a lot with "it's".