External Hard Drive not showing on desktop

Hi,
I'm using a macbook pro, 15", and have been using it with my external hard drive for the past 2 months.
This afternoon, I was using the external, where i have all my music and photos stored, and it was working fine. I left the computer on sleep for about 2 hours (all programs that have stuff on the external I made sure to quit before), and when I got back the "icon" for the back up disk was slightly more "invisible" on my desktop and time machine informed me that the latest back up failed. When I tried to eject it (nothing on the disk was being used) it said it couldnt be ejected because the disk was in use.
I tried to eject again, same thing, so I restarted the computer. When I restarted the computer the external harddrive icon did not show up on my desk top. I tried pulling it out and plugging it in a few times, the disk will start up, but not load onto my desk top.
HELP!!!
the external hard drive is a Western Digital "my Passport"
Thank you!

Danja.schluter wrote:
if I repair the disk, will i lose everything on it?
Running Disk Repair will not harm your data, the idea is to repair and make it functional again.
If successful I would make a back up of that data because you may be skating on thin ice.

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Please triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
ls -@Oaen /V* | pbcopy
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
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Message was edited by: eww

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tonydenson wrote:
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External Hard Drive not showing on desktop

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