Can't unmount my External Hard Drive?

Hi guys,
I've been using my Seagate Portable Media 500GB external hard drive for Time Machine on Mountain Lion.
Last week, Time Machine's backup failed, with the message "Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder."
Using Disk Utility, I verified the disk which asked me to repair it. On trying to repair it, I received the message "Couldn't unmount disk". I received this message also when trying to Erase or Partition the drive and I don't know how to take it further.
The drive is still visible in Finder and I can still access its contents.
I've also tried using a new power cable for the drive and I'm having the same results.
Any advice would be great!
Thanks.

Hi elliswicks,
Please follow this step before atempting Joe Gramm's "boot into recovery" method.
1) Keep your external hard drive plugged in.
2) Restart your computer.
3) Go to Disk Utility and eject the drive.
You should have no problems carrying out Step 3. If this fails, you'll have to rely on Joe Gramm's advanced method.
Hope you (and anybody else) have benefited from this simpler method! Don't forget to like or put "This solved my question" or "This helped me"!
Good luck!
from Galaxy User

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