WD External Hard drive not working with new Macbook Pro

I have recently upgraded to a new Macbook Pro and when connecting a WD 1 TB Passport external hard drive, it doesn't appear on the MBP, but when I connect it to my old Macbook running 10.5.8, it appears normally. Is this a problem with formatting or an issue because it is USB 2.0...
Any help appreciated as I have a lot of data on the hard drive and would like to be able to use it with my new MBP.

I'm on Lion, with similar issues with two WD external HD. But what I found fixed the problem was to:
1. go to the manufacturer's website (in this case Western Digital),
2. locate my external HD, download the download.
For instance, I downloaded the WD Drive Utilities for Mac (for My Passport for Mac USB 3.0):
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=219&sid=157&lang=en
Install the downloaded app.
3. Plug in external (this part, I think is important) directly into your tower or laptop (as opposed to through a USB multi-plug extender). Possibly this is because you access more power?
[I'm trying to remember in which order everything happened. But I think at this point the external hard drive mounted]
4. Install the software that is found on the external HD (in my case, it was a brand new device, so that had never been installed).
5. Run "WD Drive Utilities" and run diagnostics.
6. Test to see if it holds. Unmount the External HD. Unplug. Replug in and see if it mounts.
Note: I have not yet tested to see if plugging in the external somewhere other than directly into the tower also works. But I think the main problem is getting it to mount the first time and installing the software. That's what I think.

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