Ibook won't recognise external western digital hard drive

I have just got a new external hard drive. The setup instructions say I need to go into disk utility and erase the drive before it will work however I cannot even see the hard drive in disk utility.
Before you ask yes I have connected all leads e.t.c properly!
Any suggestions on how to get up and running?
The hard drive is the 160gb Western Digital, dual option back up, firewire and usb unit.

check the formatting and be sure it's something like FAT32(i prefer it so i can have pc compatibility)if it's FAT it won't work and some companies use FAT i know my flash drives i got aren't mac compatible right away you have to format them to FAT32(which i did and got extra space on my 1GB).

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    Message was edited by: EZ Jim
    Mac Pro Quad Core (Early 2009) 2.93Ghz w/Mac OS X (10.6.4)  MacBook Pro (13 inch, Mid 2009) 2.26GHz (10.6.4)
    LED Cinema Display  G4 PowerBook  1.67GHz (10.4.11)  iBookSE 366MHz (10.3.9)  External iSight

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