External HDD (for Time Machine backup) detected but won't mount on desktop

I have been using this external HDD as my Time Machine backup for many months now. No desktop display settings have been changed (I checked), but now it won't mount on my desktop. I suspect one of my kids was banging around on the keyboard, as they have done in the past, and renamed it. Unfortunately it appears they renamed it to NULL this time around. I didn't think that was possible, but I've plugged it into 3 different Windows and iMac machines, and in all cases the external drive gets detected, but then in all cases it doesn't mount. The Volume Label does appear blank in the device properties.
Is there a way to access my drive again to rename it? Will that allow it to mount again? Or is there a way to access it to just reformat the whole darn thing?
Thanks!
Tom

I don't think it's possible to have a null name for a drive so i suspect there is a problem with it. open disk utility. does it show the name of the drive? try repairing it (repair disk not permissions). if that doesn't help you can always reformat it with Disk Utility. select the whole drive ( model, not name) and use the partition tab.

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