External drives no longer mounting

I have two external drives connected via Firewire. The Lacie d2 is partitioned in two and it mounts automatically every morning when I start up the computer. The other is a NewerTech with a built-in Firewire/USB hub that I use to clone my iMac using SuperDuper. I only turn it on when I'm going to run SD because it's noisy. I bought a Seagate Barracuda drive and put in in a Macally enclosure for my daughter. I hooked it up via FW and turned it on. It mounted, a window popped up saying it couldn't be read and I clicked the button to Initialize, which opened Disk Utility. I clicked on Partition, then Options and chose the GUID partition. I clicked Partition and it chugged away for about an hour, getting nowhere. I then chose Erase and Zero Out Data. A window came up saying it couldn't be erased because it wasn't configured, and the drive icon disappeared. I turned it off and back on – no icon. I switched from FW to USB – no luck. I restarted with the drive on – no icon. Now neither of my other two drives will mount. They don't show up in Disk Utility or System Preferences > Startup Disk. I would appreciate any explanations of what I've done wrong and how to fix it. Thank you.
Cheers, Peter

Thank you for the information, baltwo. The problem now is that none of my drives mount, so I can't do anything with them. They don't show up on the Desktop, in Disk Utility or in System Preferences > Startup Disk. When I turn on the drive I use with SuperDuper, SD says it can't be found. In System Profiler > Firewire, I get a Warning, in red, Unable to list Firewire devices.
Cheers, Peter
Message was edited by: Pram

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