Can't mount my external drive

I have a MacBook Pro 15", 2.8 GH, Snow Leopard 10.3; I bought it on september, 2009. I also have an external Western Digital hard drive: 2TB, MacBook Studio II. I use it for back up only, through Time Machine; the disk itself was bought in december 2009.
A week or so I connected my MBP through the firewire port and it the disk didn't mount automatically as it usually does. Time Machine simply says that it can't back up because the hard drive isn't available. I restarted the computer with the drive connected, but nothing happened.
The first time this happened I just droped it. A few hours later I connected the disk again and, voila, it was there, as usual.
This week I have the same problem again. Only this time, after a few hours, I can't still see the disk. I've checked on the Western Digital website and they have no drivers at all.
What can I do? What can possibly be wrong?

Can you see the drive in Disk Utility? If so, can you get it to mount with the mount button? Can you use Disk Utility to repair it?
Also, do you have any other FW devices you can try to check out the port itself?
I don't really know what the problem is. I had something similar happen to me with my iBook, where the external FW drive didn't mount at all and couldn't be seen by Disk Utility either. I then tried a USB cable and the drive mounted. After doing the backup, Super Duper wouldn't force quit and the iBook froze--even the beach ball froze. I had to shut down using the power button.
Next I tried the drive on my MBP FW port, and it mounted. I decided to repair the backup and it had errors that would not repair. I then erased and reformatted it. I then tried the iBook FW port and the drive mounted. I then did another Super Duper backup, and ever since, the drive has mounted and worked without issue.
Don't know if any of this sheds any light, but I eventually surmised that the FW port on the iBook must have not been working properly, but that the shutdown and restart seems to have reset it.
I'm thinking it might not hurt to go through the procedure to shut down your computer to reset the ports:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1317?viewlocale=en_US
It also wouldn't hurt to boot from your install disc and navigate to Disk Utility and repair your boot drive. Also use Disk Utility to repair your external drives. I took all of these steps, and have had no issues since.
Good luck!

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2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400:           Partition Scheme: GUID Partition Table
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2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400:                     Name                    : “Terra 8”
2014-04-20 13:44:30 -0400:                     Size                    : 2 TB
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Can't mount my external drive

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