My external hard drive doesn't appear in disk utility

I've been using a western digital my book (500gb) external hard drive connected to my Airport Extreme for TIme Machine Backups.  For no apparent reason, it stopped backing up a few days ago.  I've plugged the drive directly into my MBP, and it doesn't appear in system profiler or disk utility.  Any ideas how to get the MBP to mount the drive?

matthewfromlincoln wrote:
I've been using a western digital my book (500gb) external hard drive connected to my Airport Extreme for TIme Machine Backups.
I hate to have to tell you this, but backing-up that way is unreliable, and not supported by Apple.  See  Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk.
But, as ds store says, the disk is likely dead. 

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