External HD wont work

Ive got a 400 gb external hard drive made by samsung ( i think?). it worked perfectly untill about 4days ago and now i cant get it to come up on either my powerbook or ibook. This is/was my backup drive so it there is anyway to try and force it to load so i can see if there is a problem and pull some important files off that would be great or am i just out of luck...thanks

try this. unplug it, turn it off etc. plug it in, turn it on, open disk utility and try to mount it through there.

-chris

I also have had problems with two external drives which previously worked for about two weeks before packing it in on my ibook. With so much being lost I am really worried about wasting money on another hard drive. Is this an ibook problem? Any suggestions as what external to get? I have 5gb left on my hard drive so have to come up with something soon!

Type df -T in Terminal & hit enter and let us know what you get. It basically shows you all the HDs attach to your Mac.