IMAC won't start with external USB drive

I've been running Leopard for a few weeks now and decided to connect an external USB hard drive to use with Time Machine, it did the backup fine and seems to be working fine... however, every time I start my imac in the morning I get a gray screen that just hangs. I have to unplug the USB drive then reboot again.. that salves the problem.. but is annoying to have to do that each time.. I also noticed today that my ipod when plugger in via USB will not mount on the desktop.. I have to unplug the USB hard drive then plug the ipod in again.. that solves the problem..
Anyone have this same issue..??? It seems to be USB related or Time Machine related.. maybe both..
Cheers
D.

The Disks are formatted with Ntfs as i am using Bootcamp with Windows 7. So repairing disks would not work in Mac OSX, and is not needed as the disks are ok. I would be a strange coincidence that both disks would be corrupted at the same Time.
I have tried three different other USB disks in the meantime and the Macbook could Boot up everytime with no problem. I found the answer in another forum. The controllers (USB to SATA) in the enclosures of the disks are not compatible with my Macbook, they are rather cheap WD disks and a lot of other users reported the same problem. ist might be possible to upgrade the firmware, but i will rather look for some other disks and try them first before i buy.

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