Mac OS 10.4.10 / Unable to mount my external drive

I'm using a previous model 15" MacBook Pro, equipped with the 2.33 Core Duo chip and 2 GB of RAM. I used software update on Saturday to upgrade to 10.4.10 and since then, I haven't been able to get my external USB hard drive to mount.
I've done some searching around the support forums and found that this was a problem for a few people upgrading to 10.3.9, but I haven't seen anything yet about this behavior with the 10.3.10 upgrade.
Has anyone found a fix yet? I work in the office half of the week and then at home the other half of the week. All of my files are kept on my external USB drive and so without being able to access it on my Mac at home, I'm kind of stuck. I can use my wife's Mac Mini, but I'd really like to be able to work on my computer.
I've tried repairing permissions running basic maintenance using Oynx, but the drive still won't mount. It shows up immediately when I plug into my old iBook and my XP machine at work, so I know it's not the drive itself. I don't seem to have any problems getting my iPod to mount (2nd gen Mini), nor a USB flash drive.
Thoughts? I'd really appreciate some friendly advice as this is pretty "mission critical" for me.
Robb

I took my MacBook Pro into the Apple Store today and the Genius wasn't able to figure out the problem. He claimed it was the drive being finicky. We eventually rolled back to OS 10.4.8, which I then upgrade to 10.4.9 and it works just as it used to before I upgraded to 10.4.10.
Just wanted to report on the situation, in case someone else was having this same problem and needed help.

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