external hard drive recognition problem

hello everyone,

i've just registered to the forum while i was looking for a solution in one of the pages. well, i have an external harddrive with ALL MY MUSIC in it. one day, when i connected the thing to my macbook the green light on the external drive blinked but the laptop did not recognize it (well the drive worked because there was the usual sound coming from it + the green light). when i tried to run disk utility, it said "gathering disk information" and it was struck in that state. what would you recommend? please guy, you MUST help...i've got whole of my music in it!!!

ps. something similar happened before but i could fix the problem when i bought a new usb-to-miniusb cable. this time, the problem remained when i did that.

guys, i really need some help. please? anyone?

I've only had one problem with my external HD. I accidentally used the power cord from my cable modem and plugged it into my external HD. The external wasn't getting enough power to mount to the desktop but it had enough power to turn on and act like it was working.
I have a WD My Book Pro.
Bryan

What kind of external are you using?

I anxiously waiting for an answer as well. My G-tech mini no longer mounts on the desktop and all my iTunes music is in it......

so, i had the proper cable and just to be sure, i've bought a new one. it's a miniusb to usb cable and it is identical to the one i used while it had been working. any ideas?