How can I get my MacBook to recognize my external hard drive again?

Hi,
I own a 500GB Toshiba external hard drive, and I've been using it for months now, and up until today it's worked flawlessly. I never formatted it, I just used it as a mass storage device so that I wouldn't have compatibility issues with PC's because of the formatting. For some unknown reason, today the hard drive decided it didn't want to work; I can't see it in the Finder. However, I tried it on a PC today and it's just fine there. I've never disconnected it without ejecting it first or anything else that I can think of that might damage the drive. I'm at a total loss, though admittedly I'm a novice, so maybe there's something I'm overlooking here. What can I do to fix this problem?
Another thing: I just upgraded from 10.5.7 to 10.5.8... could that cause issues?
Thanks! If this is a topic that's already been discussed, please link me to the thread or article.

Does it appear in Disk Utility? (located in utilities folder of applications)
If so is it mountable from there?
And just to check- you are using the same connection (USB or firewire) to connect the PCs and the Mac?

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