Exernal drive won't mount but seen in disk utility

2011 Macbook Pro 2.3Ghz 8Gb on OSX 10.7.2 connected Maxtor One Touch 4 750Ghz firewire drive. Has been working perfectly for 3 years.
I'm runnign Pro Tools 9. I had some issues with IK Multimedia plug-ins being de-authorized earlier today. IK suggested repairing disk permissions (which I did). Seemed to be OK, but a few hours later when I booted up the MBP it no longer recognises the drive. The drive is booting up & I've swapped out the cables, so I can rule them out.
The drive was called "PT drive". It had 3 partitions: "Rough bounces", "Samples & loops" and "PT Session drive". Now, it doesn't appear on the desktop and Pro Tools can't see it.
However, disk utility sees the drive as "750Gb Maxtor" with 3 partions: "disk1s1", "disk 1s2" and "disk1s3". All of the disk utility options are greyed out (Verify disk permissons, repair disk permissions, verify disk and reair disk) so I can't do anything with them. When I try to eject the disk, I get an error message saying the drive can;t be ejected because applications are in use. I don;t have anything running in the background.
I don't have a backup for this drive, so really need to get the problem sorted urgently. Any help greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

Re-booted everything up again this morning & the extral drive has appreared again. Very strange. I've created a back up drive in case I have similar probs in the future. A lucky escape!

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