Finder not browsing external drive

I'm having trouble with Finder.
When I connect my external drive, the icon shows up, and DiskUtility shows it mounted normally. However, when I try to open it through the Finder window, I get the error message:
"The alias “xyz” can’t be opened because the original item can’t be found."
with the buttons:
"Delete Alias" "Fix Alias..." "Okay"
--Clicking "Fix..." brings up a select file/folder window, presumably to repoint the alias -- except the drive is grayed out and not selectable, so I have to cancel.
--Clicking the other two has no relevant effect
The drive is fine.
--I've repaired the drive in DiskUtility and in DiskWarrior -- all is okay with the drive
--I can browse the contents just fine in the terminal
--iTunes can play files located on the drive, no problem
--I can connect to it via my other mac just fine; perfectly normal, no alias problem
But I cannot browse to it in the Finder on this MacBook Pro.
This happens both when I'm connected directly and when I connect via an Airport extreme.
What is wrong with Finder?

Update: Additional Information
--When connected directly via USB, I experience the behavior described above
--When connected via Airport Extreme, and I try to browse by double-clicking on the disc icon, the same as above
--But, when using as a shared disk on an Airport Extreme, if I open the drive by 1. clicking on the "airport extreme " icon in the left panel of Finder, under "SHARED", then 2. double click on the xyz share drive icon that appears in finder -- then I can browse the drive normally, and open files and the like.
This is weird.
Thanks for any help!

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Robin Ryan wrote:
Hi all,
I woke up the other day to a black screen and a frozen macbook pro (4 months old). It wouldn't boot up past the gray screen, so I tried to repair the drive with the install disc. It said that there are no errors (liar!), so I wiped it and tried to restore from my latest Time Machine backup (should be the day prior).
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Migration assistant in OSX doesn't see my external drive, even though I can access it through finder.
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