WD External HD won't mount after moving/deleting files in 10.9

Hi, Apple Expert Universe.
Preface first with my setup:
15" MacBook Pro w/Retina Display, 2.3 GHz i7, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, OS X Mavericks
Western Digital External Hard Drive, 1TB, USB 2.0
(WD applications removed per WD's suggestion after upgrading to OS X 10.9)
Today I was organizing my files on my external hard drive and computer to free up space and eliminate duplicates. I ran countless files through the application Gemini and moved and deleted hundreds of GB of data over the course of a couple hours.
At one point, I emptied the trash. I had had difficulty doing this at first because of some permission issues between users, so I went to Finder and did a CTRL + Click on "Empty Trash" to bypass these issues. This may or may not be relevant to my problem.
Now, my WD HD will not mount on my computer. I plug it in (have tried both USB ports) and all that shows is the "WD SmartWare" which always shows up alongside the HD itself under "Devices."
In Disk Utility, my named disk is greyed out under the main HD heading. (So where it tells me about the formatting of the disk and calls it what I've named it, it's greyed out, but it clearly sees the hard drive attached.) I tried to Repair the disk but it stops after a while and tells me that I need to back up my data, reformat the disk, and restore the backed-up files.
I don't know what to do next. I have looked in several other forums here and elsewhere in Mac-related sites but haven't found anything that exactly matches my problem. If you know what to do, or have suggestions that won't risk losing data, or know of another string or forum where this has been successfully resolved, I would greatly appreciate the assistance. I'm an advanced user, but I am also a dummy who put the only copy of my 100 GB photo library and many other things I would like to keep on this drive. Needless to say, I'm a little stressed out right now.
One last point: I don't have enough space to put my things on my computer's hard drive, but if I have to I'll go buy a new hard drive. I was planning on doing that anyways because using UBS 2.0 on a MBP Retina Display kind of defeats the point. Buying a new external hard drive with Thunderbolt is definitely in my future.
Thanks very much,
Christie

Sharlo wrote:
Hi V.K.,
Thanks for your response, can you provide some more details?
OS X has very limited support for NTFS. you need to repair the drive from windows.
How do I do that? I mean the disk works normally in Win XP and it worked normally in the previous OS X version. Btw. I've also installed NTFS-3D which allowed to write on the disk and search from spotlight (of course when it was mounted).
run chkdsk in windows and see if it finds any errors.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315265
it can also be that the problem is caused by ntfs-3g which is known to have a number of bugs. you can try uninstalling it or plugging in the drive in a mac without ntfs-3g installed.
there is no "issue" to solve.
Well if it worked in 10.5.6 and it works in Win XP and it doesn't work in 10.5.7 I am tempted to say 10.5.7 has an issue.
the fact that you have a problem with one drive on your particular system doesn't mean there is a problem with os x in general. an issue is when all or at least many people have a problem, not one.
furthermore, NTFS is a proprietary file system of Microsoft with closely guarded secrets about its inner workings which is why it has very limited support on other types of operating systems. apple is under no obligation to provide ANY support for something like that. programs like NTFS-3g are essentially unauthorized hacks.

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Vendor ID: 0x059b (Iomega Corporation)
Version: 0.01
Serial Number: 000000066273
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Iomega
Location ID: 0xfd300000
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Current Required (mA): 0
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Iris:
Capacity: 499.97 GB (499,972,702,208 bytes)
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File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s10
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Sharlo wrote:
Hi V.K.,
Thanks for your response, can you provide some more details?
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How do I do that? I mean the disk works normally in Win XP and it worked normally in the previous OS X version. Btw. I've also installed NTFS-3D which allowed to write on the disk and search from spotlight (of course when it was mounted).
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it can also be that the problem is caused by ntfs-3g which is known to have a number of bugs. you can try uninstalling it or plugging in the drive in a mac without ntfs-3g installed.
there is no "issue" to solve.
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Message was edited by: Daniel W, stupid grammer!

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