External hard drive disappeared and doesn't mount

Hi all,
we're using a MacMini Server at work. As backup we use an external drive and Time Machine. It has been working nicely so far. However, two days ago the external drive just disappeared. It neither shows up on the desktop nor in finder or - and that's really strange - in Disk Utility. We tried all USB ports on the Mac - nothing. We connected the hard disk to four Windows computer and it worked fine (we couldn't access it as it's a different file system but it recognized a hard drive being connected).
Other USB devices work fine on the Mac. Keyboard, mouse, no problem. Just the hard disk and, that's also strange, all other USB storages also don't work. We have a USB card reader for SD cards. The card reader seems to work (the light is on), but the SD card isn't recognized. We also tried two memory sticks in all slots - they don't show up. Neither in disk utility nor in the finder.
Has anyone of you came across this issue?

had a similar problem with a SanDisk multi card reader,.. no idea why, just flakey.
- also check the CAPACITY of your cards, some card readers can only READ a card to a maximum of 'X' eg 8GB card, thus if you put eg a 16GB card in, they crash out..

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