My Time Machine does not recognize my newly-reconnected external hard drive, so I cant set it up

I have unplugged and restarted the external drive and the notebook itself multiple times. And done some troubleshooting. The drive is simply NOT recognized by the notebook (macBook 2007). It was however working fine until last night when I dismantled the whole system (to clear the table top for a party).
Now setting up again my NEW (bought 2 weeks ago) LaCie (2 TB USB-connected external drive) neither the Time Machine NOR the Mac itself recognizes the external drive, so I can't select it when I'm asked to configure the Time Machine.....
What is going on here. The disc is far from full and I've shut down and rebooted everything. Disconnected and reconnected everything (drive from Mac too) Trouble shooting included finding the preferences in Library and deleting the old com.apple plist file which I've copied below (could not attach it here)
Thanks.
bplist00Ÿ
YHostUUIDs_ RequiresACPower_ SkipSystemFiles[BackupAlias_ DestinationUUID_ LocalizedDiskImageVolumeName_ AlwaysShowDeletedBackupsWarning]ExcludeByPathZAutoBackup° _ $00000000-0000-1000-8000-0019E33631FD
O        LaCie≈ ∂ΩH+ LaCie ≈ ∂Ωˇˇˇˇ
LaCie ≈ Ó˝ ≈ Ó˝   LaCie:LaCie   LaCie   LaCie   /Volumes/LaCieˇˇ_ $E896BFA8-4C77-3A14-BC5D-B8530F38011C_ Time Machine Backups
¶      _ (/Users/susan/Library/Mail/Envelope Index_ </Users/susan/Library/Mail/Metadata/BackingStoreUpdateJournal_ -/Users/susan/Library/Calendars/Calendar Cache_ O/Users/susan/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.DotMacSync.0019e33631fd.plis t_ 0/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/PlayReady_ 4/Users/susanjmorton/Library/Calendars/Calendar Cache   %7IUgÜ®∂¡√ÍÎÏ ˆ   4 5 < g ¶ ÷ ( [ í    ì

Does Disk Utility see the external?
(Applications / Utilities / Disk Utility)

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My Time Machine does not recognize my newly-reconnected external hard drive, so I cant set it up

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