External hard drive suddenly not showing up

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MacBook Air 2015 13" OS X El Capitan
I had to replace the power cord for my macbook a few weeks ago (cat chewed through the old one). My macbook is from 2007 and I am running OS X 10.6.8 on it. Since I have been using the new power cord, my external hard drive is not showing up in the Finder window and Time Machine cannot find it when I plug it in. I used this hard drive with no problems for two and a half years before this. The light on the hard drive does blink though, and it seems to be trying to do things. I looked for it in disk utility and it shows up there, and is properly formatted according to the user's manual (Mac OS Extended Journaled).
Needless to say, I haven't been able to back up in a while (and it's freaking me out). I am not sure if the new power cord is the culprit, but it's the only thing that has changed, and looking around online I have seen some indication that the amount of power getting to the external hard drive could be an issue (if the new power cord is faulty or something).
The hard drive is an iomega 320GB Prestige USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive. It has a USB cord with two USB thingies on it and no other power source, although it does have an outlet for a power adaptor (which I don't think came with it).
Any ideas? I'm on my third hard drive for the macbook itself, and have learned the hard way to always back up, so I need to solve this asap.
 
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Are you trying one or two USB connections?

Do you have another hard disk to try?

In disk utility if you right click on the disk and choose 'mount' what happens?
 
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I've tried both my USB ports, with one or both of the USB ends on the hard drive cord plugged in in different combinations.

I have a small memory stick that I plugged into each USB port and it registers in finder no problem.

When I try to mount the external hard drive in disk utility it says: "Mount failed. The disk “Untitled 1” could not be mounted. Try running First Aid on the disk and then retry mounting."
 
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When I try to mount the external hard drive in disk utility it says: "Mount failed. The disk “Untitled 1” could not be mounted. Try running First Aid on the disk and then retry mounting."

And did you run verify/repair disk?
 
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I hadn't - I didn't even know Disk Utility existed until a few days ago and I am afraid of screwing something up. But I did this morning and this is the message I got: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.

I've been using this hard drive to back up my mac using Time Machine, so if I have to back up this hard drive before repairing it, can I somehow do it with a PC?
 
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Oh - I just went to the finder window and noticed the drive is now showing up. and Time Machine did a back up while I was waiting for the disk repair thing to be done. So maybe it's somehow fixed itself? I don't know...
 

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