My bran new Mac Pro, won't recognize my external hard drive?

Hello,
     I just got the new mac pro about a month ago (the cylindrical kind) it has 16 MGs of ram and 250 GBs. I got a 2 TB external hard drive for time machine, and i already have a 500 GB portable hard drive for transferring files. They worked fine initially, but the computer has stopped seeing them all together. I've already restarted my computer several times. I plug them in, they light up, but the icon doesn't appear on the desktop or finder or even in disk utility. I've tested my portable drive on my laptop and it works fine, so its not the external hard drive or the cords. I also tested a flash drive and an external CD drive in the USB ports and they work fine, so i've deduced that its not a hardware issue. The best i can come up with is that its a softwear issue, but i have no idea how that would even work. Has anyone else heard of this?
     On a side note: before the computer stopped reading my hard drives, they kept unplugging themselves and saying "this hard drive was not removed properly" and then they would reappear without me touching them. I'm pretty sure this is the root of the problem. I'm out of ideas and google hasn't revealed anything to me, so if anyone knows whats going on i would really appreciate it.
Thanks.

Neither hard drive is working on the mac pro. They do not appear in disk utility.
My chords seem fine. I don't have another cable to try on the Mac Pro. but both cables worked on my 2011 macbook pro with my external hard drive. my 2TB didn't work on my macbook pro however... it didn't even appear in disk utility. I wonder though if that has to do with the usb 3. I know my laptop has USB 2 and my external hard drive is USB 3 and i'm not sure if its backwards compatible.
I have tried all of the USB ports on the Mac Pro, the hard wear seems fine.
I will try resetting the SMC shortly and see if that works.

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