Computer won't recognize external hard drive.

Maybe some more information on my part will help:

The hard drive is recognized by both Disk Utility(DU) and System Profiler.

In the top of the left-hand list section of DU, my HD appears as '74.5 GB Generic USB Disk...' Also, underneath this heading is a subheading 'Shupa,' which is the name I gave my HD. It currently has the blank white page as it's icon, but when i run the 'verify disk' and 'repair disk' functions on the '74.5 GB...' the Shupa icon goes to the orange HD icon . I am not able to run the verify and repair disk functions on 'shupa,' I get this message "Verify volume failed with error Could not unmount disk."

Thanks ahead of time.

Yet another update:

I noticed this morning that one of my USB ports was not working. I did a power management unit reset and that fixed the USB port problem, but I still cannot access my external HD.

There is also a chance that the external HD was damaged last night, as it fell to the carpet from a height of two feet. I will take a look at the manufacturer's FAQ and report back.

Will

The external HD is an I/O Magic 80 gig Data to Go external HD. I used i/o magic's live chat support and was told that they did not offer support for macs. Also, the hd is apple partitioned, so the support guy said a pc wouldn't be able to read it. After I told him it had fallen from 2ft, he said that I could try removing it from the casing and then attaching it using the usb cord to see what happens.

I called apple support, and was not given any answers. I tried the 'P-R-alt-command-power button' function, but nothing happened.

So the problem just fixed itself. I have no idea how though. I was trying to restore the HD to my iPod, but disk utility came up with an error. I then looked at my desktop and there was the HD icon.

Will