External Hard Drive won't mount after improper eject.

[papercrate]

I'm running Tiger 10.4.8 on a Intel Duo Core MacBook. I have an external LaCie d2 (FA Porsche design) 160GB Hard Drive (USB 2.0)

Here is the situtation (I emailed this to LaCie support as well, but thought I'd post it here too):
Every time the hard drive gets disconnected or shut off without properly ejecting it, it will not re-mount. It shows up in the Disk Utility... but will not mount, will not verify or repair completely, and the permissions options are grayed out.

Now, before I used to be able to get around this by connecting it to my Windows machine that had Windows XP installed on it. I could connect it, it would show up in Exporer, I could disconnect it and then plug it into the MacBook and it would mount fine again. But now I have moved to London and only have my MacBook with me and don't have access to another PC with Windows XP anywhere nearby.

The hard drive is operating normally, the lights come on as normal. Then when it tries to mount to the Mac it goes yellow, then makes some noises and goes to orange (normal), but won't mount. I have tried restarting, shutting down. And I've done about every other configuration of starting/connecting the Mac and the LaCie drive. Still nothing.

I have tried running the LaCie firmware, etc. updater and it
just closes as soon as it searches for any hard drives connected, and nothing
happens. I also tried to see if I could get anything working with
TechTool Deluxe, but it wont even show the LaCie drive in the Volumes list.

Please help... Is there any way to just be able to mount it again on my Mac? I feel like I've tried everything.

Thanks in advance.

 

[ialex]

Dear Papercrate,
I have a 15" Powerbook. I too have a LaCie 160GB Porsche that will no longer mount, I too am running 10.4.8. I had a bunch of data that I backed up onto this drive that was hardly used. I wanted to re-install my OS because my machine has been running really slowly and I've tried everything to fix that problem. So I did this back up and my LaCie was mounted and fine. I re-installed the OS and got all my updates. My machine is now running really well but when I reconnected the drive it is now saying "Your computer is unable to read this drive". I've tried it on an iBook and I get the same message, so I know it's not my machine, I think I've somehow messed up the directory. The only options I am presented with is to Ignor, Eject (Even though there is no image to eject), or to Initialize! When I click initialize it takes me to Disk Utility to presumably format the drive which is out of the question because it has two entire clones on there and I know they're still there it's just a question of gaining permission again. I'm not going to be any help but if you manage to solve your problem I would be grateful if you would relay the solution to me.
Many Thanks
ialex