Trouble mounting external hard drives to my Macbook after restoring it to factory settings. Solutions??

Question

I just restored my Macbook Version 10.4.11 to factory settings because I heard that it is good to do that to clean it up. I had saved everything on a WD My Book 1110 Media, but now when I try to retrieve the stuff on there, the WD won't even mount.
The whole reason I was needing to make room on my macbook is the computer was freezing up and acting really slowly. I'm about to do a recording project using Protools and needed the macbook to be fast. I thought restoring it would help. Instead, it now won't mount my Glyph, which I need to run protools.
Then was when I tried to mount the WD hard drive and it wouldn't mount either!!!! I'm guessing the problem is with the mac, since both hard drives would not mount. The glyph is connected with a firewire, and the WD is connect by USB. I'm clueless as to what to do. I definitely need to recover the stuff on the WD hard drive.
One other thing: the drives do show up in Disk Utility, but the mount button is gray so I can't do that. Here is the info:
Name :           WD My Book 1110 Media
          Type :           Disk
          Disk Identifier :           disk1
          Media Name :           WD My Book 1110 Media
          Media Type :           Generic
          Connection Bus :           USB
          Connection Type :           External
          USB Serial Number :           574D41563530363834343732
          Partition Type :           Apple_partition_scheme
          Writable :           Yes
          Ejectable :           Yes
          Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed :           No
          Location :           External
          Total Capacity :           465.1 GB (499,405,291,520 Bytes)
          S.M.A.R.T. Status :           Not Supported
          Disk Number :           1
          Partition Number :           0
Do I need to install Mac OS 9 Driver? If so, how can I do that with out losing any data from my WD hard drive.
I'm clueless. Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

The OS 9 Driver would only be applicable if you were to use OS X
and OS 9 from the external drive; it is not necessary for OS 9 files
to be stored on an external drive, only if you were to use Classic
or OS 9 on there.
So it would be unable to host an OS 9.2.2 system for Classic or
any applications that would require read-write on external HDD.
{What of the WD HDD's driver update, in link? Do Not update
Western Digitals 'firmware' as it also is available, & wipes HD.}
The linked driver download, for the WD drive itself, may (or not) be
installable without harming data on the drive. I read where that driver
can support back to OS X Tiger 10.4.11, so it would support Tiger final.
Do you have an original source for the Glyph & Pro-
Tools, outside of the saved content of the WD HDD?
Another idea, could be the enclosure of the WD may have failed while the drive inside is OK. Would not be the first time, so that may be something to consider. If you get another enclosure, be sure if there are any jumper changes for WD drive to be compatible, they match. You may be able to get one of those cables to use instead of the enclosure, that allows the external drive itself to run; they usually include a power adapter, but the WD may not have had an external. However the cable set to run a bare drive often includes one.
Hopefully you can restore access to the external drive
& then find a better backup scheme, in duplicate.
Good luck & happy computing!