External Hard Drive disappearing from desktop

I recently bought two external USB drives to use with Time Machine, one for my PowerBook G4, and one for my iMac.
The one that I connected to my PowerBook at home works without a problem, but the other one, not so much.
I use my iMac in the classroom, and I set everything up to work with Time Machine. No problems. The drive was recognized, I reformatted it, and the initial backup finished without a problem. Then, later, I noticed that the hard drive was no longer showing up on my desktop, and checking Time Machine showed that things hadn't been backing up hourly as they should have been.
I launched Disk Utility, but the hard drive didn't show up, so I couldn't mount it that way. Plugging and unplugging the USB cable didn't help, so I shut down the computer and turned off the hard drive. I turned the drive back on and then restarted the computer. It was back, and Time Machine immediately started running again.
But then later the drive disappeared again! I went through the same process as before, but this time I switched the USB ports before I restarted. It was back.
But then later, it was gone again.
The other strange thing is that even when I restart the computer, the drive doesn't reappear unless I've turned the drive off.
Any suggestions? Is there some auto-unmount and never come back again option in Leopard that I'm not aware of?

Does the drive even show up in Disk Utility? If so, run Disk Utility and verify (and repair if necessary) the drive:
[Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214]
[Using Disk Utility in Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302672]
if it doesn't show up in Disk Utility and you don't have any other copy of the files you will need to try a stronger utility such as [Diskwarrior|http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior> to try to repair the drive. Otherwise you can try to copy off the files using a utility such as [Data Rescue II|http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php] or [FileSalvage|http://subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?mainpage=product_info&productsid=1]. Both have free trial versions that let you see if the software will help before you decide to buy.

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no it doesn't show up at all in those either.
Hmm. Then that sounds like the interface to the drive isn't even talking. You could try opening up the computer and making sure the cables are all connected firmly (of course, it should be off).
here's the log:
Nothing here looks too alarming.
Apr 21 09:51:00 Greg-Simpsons-Computer webdavd[220]:
network_mount: WebDAV protocol not supported; file:
mount.tproj/webdav_network.c; line: 2702
Apr 21 09:51:07 Greg-Simpsons-Computer webdavd[245]:
network_mount: WebDAV protocol not supported; file:
mount.tproj/webdav_network.c; line: 2702
Was your iDisk mounted at the time? Or another WebDAV server?
Apr 21 09:51:20 Greg-Simpsons-Computer
diskarbitrationd[39]: mdsyncServer [193]:28715 not
responding.
Apr 21 09:51:20 Greg-Simpsons-Computer
diskarbitrationd[39]: mds [171]:28163 not
responding.
Hmm. These are part of Spotlight, but they don't really give any clues, just that they weren't responding. Which might be because the drive disappered during your search.
Waiting for MirrorAgent to launch and respond to
CFMessagePortCreateRemote(). [186]
Again, part of iDisk.
2007-04-21 09:52:41.360 SyndicationAgent[252]
WARNING: BestCalendarDateFromString - can't
interpret: 'Sat
that last line then repeats a lot of times
Nothing to worry about. It's badly formatted date strings from some iTunes RSS feeds. They're default bookmarks in a couple of places, which is why you see them sometimes.
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<Product Registration><Product
Registration><AWSCommonSymbols.dll> when trying to
load /Library/Application Support/Product
Registration.app/Contents/MacOS/Product Registration
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Adobe LM Service: Started
AdobeLM Service
Just the Adobe license manager telling you it started. Nothing to worry about.
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