Macbook won't recognize external hard drive

[meyerm11]

I am having a problem with my external hard drive. I was using it the other day working with some of the files on it and it shut down my computer a couple times. The second time it did this, after the computer shut down, I would turn it on and then it would go right back off until I removed the hard drive and turned it on and it was fine. Now my computer won't recognize the hard drive at all when i plug it in. The light on the hard drive will come on but it will not show up on my computer.

The hard drive is a WD 1TB Passport and it still works fine with every other computer I plug it into, PCs and macs both.

I have a late 2008 13" Aluminum Macbook.

Any help, suggestions, or ideas of what to try or what I should do would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[Tomorrow]

I am having a problem with my external hard drive.

it still works fine with every other computer I plug it into, PCs and macs both.

These two statements are outright contradictory.

My recommendation would be to use a computer that CAN read the drive to salvage the data from it, plug the drive back into your Mac, then reformat it.