External Hard Drive Not Mounting

[milimetersquared]

i have a lacie 500gb external hard drive hooked up to a usb port. i use it occasionally to back things up, so it isn't on that much, but it's always worked perfectly. however, when i went to turn it on today, it booted up and started spinning, but did not show up on my desktop. it does not show up in disc utility's left-hand bar, but DOES show up in system profiler (link to pic (http://picasaweb.google.com/milimetersquared/MacProblems/photo#5194101745859372898)). help me mount this disc; it has important data on it.

i'm using a 2ghz 17" c2d imac running 10.4.11. the hard disc is fat-32 formatted.

i have never removed/turned off this drive while it was loading, thus risking the chance of corrupting its data. i have tried switching usb ports, but to no avail.

any help would be greatly appreciated!

[milimetersquared]

could someone please help me?

[spinnerlys]

I solved such an issue with my firewire 800 drives via shutting down the Mac, pulling all cables (power, usb, audio, etc.), waiting for at least 15 seconds (I waited longer), and putting the power cable and keyboard/mouse cable back in.

The start the Mac, and when it finished loading the system try again mounting your drive by putting the cable in.

It's an official procedure from Apple, but I can't seem to find the explanation on their side, the name of it escapes me.

Good luck.

[milimetersquared]

wow; it worked! thank you so much, spinnerlys!