USB Hard Drive Disappears after 10.6.3 update

My Samsung S2 640 GB USB portable hard drive is missing from Desktop, Finder and Disk Utility-- but visible in System Profiler after 10.6.3 update. It was fine before the update.
Plugged directly into rear of iMac, I changed cables and slots-- no joy. Even tried a double USB cable as there is no external power supply.
Four other USB HDs work just fine in all slots om the iMac , and this Samsung S2 works fine in my MacBook SL 10.6.3
I bought an identical Samsung S2 and it had the same problems-- so it's not the drive.
Suggestions?
Message was edited by: Patrick Cleburne

Boot from your install disc & run Repair Disk from the utility menu. To use the Install Mac OS X disc, insert the disc, and restart your computer while holding down the C key as it starts up.
Select your language.
Once on the desktop, select Utility in the menu bar.
Select Disk Utility.
Select the disk or volume in the list of disks and volumes, and then click First Aid.
Click Repair Disk.
Restart your computer when done.

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    The jumpers are correct for both Maxtor Drives.
    Rodney, you are correct in that the initial problem (slow rendering/"out of Memory" crashes) was caused by my not realizing I'd stupidly captured several GBs of media to my system drive, and not checking which drives those files were on (as I'd assumed I'd put them on one of my external media drives) once that problem presented itself.
    Before I'd determined what I'd done, I bought the extra RAM. After I'd found the media files on the System Drive, and saw that my dedicated media drives were too full to easily move them, I decided to buy an additional Internal drive so that I could:
    -Move the Media onto it relatively quickly and finish my urgent project.
    -Juggle all my media into a more organized fashion for archiving (as most of my projects are on-going long-term affairs)
    -Wipe it, Partition it, and clone my System Drive onto it, as a spare bootable drive in case my OEM System Drive failed.
    Copying the Media files onto the New Drive and moving the System Drive's Media files into the Trash worked great: huge improvement in Rendering, etc.
    Before shutting down for the night I Emptied the Trash, and was pleased with the amount of space I'd freed up on the System Drive.
    My guess is that the System Drive was terribly fragmented, having been subjected to intense use over the past 5 years without any sort of Drive Maintainence, and deleting that massive amount from it in one shot caused my extreme system sluggishness upon Startup the next day.
    My subsequent lame attempts to solve the sluggishnes ultimately resulted in my losing access to both drives.
    Today, I replaced the Backup Battery, pushed the PMU, re-attached the AC, and Powered Up with the case open as per your suggestion.
    It was trying for a few minutes (the gray screen went black at one point, and then returned to gray) before presenting me with the flashing question mark.
    There was, however, a quiet but distinct "buzzing" sound that would alternate: 1 sec "buzz", one second silence, one second "buzz", one second silence, etc. coming from the drives, even after the "?" appeared.
    I powered down, removed the Ribbon and Power Cables from the new "Slave" drive, and powered up again, with the exact same results.
    I powered down, removed the Ribbon and Power cables from the original "Master" drive, reinstalled the Jumper on the New Drive as "Master", plugged the End of the Ribbon and the Power cables into the New "Master" drive and powered up. The screen went to the "?" within 20 seconds instead of 4+ minutes, and no more "buzzing".
    I put the Apple Hardware Tools Disk in, ran the "long" test, and everything came out fine.
    I have to abandon this for now, but thanks again for your previous advice, and any more you may have!
    Cheers,
    Patterson

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