Drive Suddenly Won't Mount

I've had a 500GB Seagate external drive connected via firewire for my Time Machine for awhile now. I've used time machine with it to recover files, it always mounted and ejected fine, never had any problems, etc.
Today, all of a sudden, it won't mount. The weird part is the drive is operating. Something is writing to it - it's write light is blinking and I can hear it working. Still won't mount. I tried it on a different mac, same deal. It shows up in Disk Utility, but all of the buttons are grayed out. I can't verify or repair it. When I try to erase the drive via Disk Utility, it says it failed because "Resource Busy". Time machine is not writing to it. What the **** could be writing to it without me knowing?!
Anyone experience this before?

For some reason, with my WD 160GB drive, when I plug it in and it turns on, but it never mounts. I have to go into disk utility and wait, and wait, and wait, until it shows up in disk utility (a few minutes) then I have to select the drive and click on mount. It started doing this within the past few months. I have no idea why, but it's a pain.

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