Time Machine difficulties
I've had an odd issue with Time Machine today. Let me start from a couple of days ago. My daughter got a new iPod for Xmas, so I hooked it up to the MacBook to sync up the songs and playlists. iTunes comes up saying I need to upgrade the version of iTunes. So I come here to the Apple web site and try to update. The newest version of iTunes isn't available for this OS X on my MacBook, version 10.5.8. I learned that I need to order the upgrade to Leopard for my OS. Done, spent the $20 for the disk and it's on a FedEx truck somewhere between here and Tenessee. The page that I ordered the disk from said to backup my files. No problem, I plug in my external WD hard drive and it backs up with Time Machine. Today, I figured I would double check to see if all our photos, videos, and other files have made it onto the HD. I plug in the hard drive, and nothing comes up. Unplug, wait a couple of seconds, replug in a different USB port. Nothing. I've changed to two different cables, nothing. I have my work computer with me, a Dell. It recongnized the hard drive (unable to open its contents, though, because I believe it's an Apple formatted disk??) But it's there and I even "safetly remove external hard drive" to take it off the USB. I looked up a couple of things to try online, like going to WD's web site and downloading/installing driver updates for that particular HD, didn't work. I reset the PRAM, no luck. And I tried resetting the SMC, nope. Anyone have an other ideas? Please, please, please, I would like to save the photos on this hard drive!!!! Thank you...
MacBook (13-inch Early 2009), Mac OS X (10.5.8)