So after working on my demo reel for the past six months, I just had my external crap out on me. I saw the signs, but didn't think it would happen so quickly. It wasn't mounting every time I booted and it would lose connection randomly. I had tried to back up as much stuff to single layer dvd's as I could, but much of it being extremely large uncompressed video files could not be split over multiple disks without reconstructing animations in After Effects. So long story short, I got burned because I was a cheapo and didn't have a raid of drives setup to make mirror copies. I learned my lesson, I am getting 2x 250 GB FW 800 drives, a FW 800 Express card for my 15" MBP, and a double layer external burner. I have tried remounting it, reseting it, reconnecting the cables inside and have had no luck. I tried different computers and even using USB 2.0 to connect. I am out of ideas and will not spend over a grand to have Drive Savers recover the files. I lost over 10,000 songs, 2000 photos, my demo reel, time consuming animations, application installers, and much more. I am trying to look at it positively though, at least the third time around (accidentally deleted entire iPod with demo reel files 6 months ago) my demo reel should be more polished. Here is the screenshot of my effort to repair it in disk utility. 
