Time Machine Problems of a Dire Nature

[Tigerdaly]

I have been a convert to the Mac system for a couple of years now, however I have hit a problem.
When I bought my imac I invested in a Iomega minimax 500 gb hard drive to compliment my system and provide a time machine archive.
All has been good until now. The drive doesn't appear on my desktop and time machine say's I don't have a drive connected, yet its powered up and wizzing.
I have tried changing usb ports and cables yet nothing.
The only thing that see's it is the disk utility, yet that wont repair or do anything to it.
Is this a systematic failure of the drive or is there anything else I can do.

 

[gr8tfly]

If it sees it, but says it cannot be repaired, you might have some luck using Disk Warrior. It can rebuild a new directory, and, if it can't, it possibly can provide a temporary one so you can recover data from the drive.