DiskWarrior Preview Not Reading External Hard Drive -- Can't back up files

So I recently fell upon the grey screen with the folder problem. After some research I got disk warrior and ran it on my computer (which I got in September 2006). After it was finished, DiskWarrior told me that the disk was malfunctioning and therefore could not replace the old directory with the new directory. What I take this to mean is that I need to get a new hard drive or a new computer altogether.
Per the recommendation that I back up my files, I tried inserting my USB eternal hard drive, however it is not showing up on the DiskWarrior Preview screen (the one where you would be able to transfer files). I restarted the computer and redid the whole process, and the external drive did show up on the list of disks that I had the option of repairing. I chose to rebuild my internal drive, of course, but came back to the Preview window where I could not get the external drive to appear. How do I back up my files???
I will be able to stop by an Apple store this weekend, so I'd like to know if there is anything else I could do to save my computer, more specifically how I can back up my files in the case that something terrible happens to my data.
Thanks
- Liam

Hi,
I was wondering if you ever resolved this issue as i am having exactly the same problem with my powerbook G4 17" With Leopard (i cant remember the exact version and now i have no way to check).
It recently would not boot up past the gray screen and after a while of the apple logo with the spinning bar it shut it self down again.
After going through all try to book from system disk) and getting pretty dismal results i have come to use disk warrior 4.1.
Now i managed to boot the machine from the disk and have run the rebuild option and after a couple of hours i was faced with the message that
"disk warrior has successfully rebuilt a new directory from the disk named macintosh HD" but then "THE NEW DIRECTORY CANNOT REPLACE THE ORIGINAL DIRECTORY BECAUSE OF A DISK MALFUNCTION"
This report then goes on to tell me that it is highly recommended that i back up all the data from the preview disk.
So this is where the problem lies, i can not get any external drive to in the preview window so that i can copy the information. The drives work just fine, have ample space but i just can not access them through preview window.
I did what was said above as well in restart the disk warrior process agian with the external drive already plugged in (with even an option to rebuild that) yet after rebuilding the internal harddrive again i can not see the external. The weird thing is i know that the machine recognises that it is there as i can save a pdf report to it yet when it comes to access through the preview window there is no such option.
Does anyone know what to do? Do i look for another programme or i could hook it up to another mac and perhaps it would recognise that as a disk to send to . I just need a viable option of getting my data from the internal drive to an external source so that i can re format the thing.
I can see it, i know its there yet i just cant figure out how to do it. Very frustrating.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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DiskWarrior Preview Not Reading External Hard Drive -- Can't back up files

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