Western Digital woes... please help!

I have been doing research for the past hour on various postings, but I can't seem to find an answer or solution.
I am a filmmaker/editor, with my documentary film on 2 Western Digital 750 gig Pro Edition drives. Last night, as I passed by my iMac, I noticed there was a "Disk Cannot Be Read" error message that popped up on the screen. The one Western Digital drive that I had plugged in was no longer mounted. The message instructed me to "ignore" "eject" or "initialize." I clicked on initialize, it brought me to disk utility, I tried to run repair disk, and I got all crazy kinds of error messages. So, I tried this with the other Western Digital drive, and got the same message. And then I started to freak out.
I tried to mount the disks on my G4 PowerBook, but-- same thing. If I tried to connect via USB 2.0 (there's no regular USB on these drives), I could find the drives in Disk Utility, but they'd be grayed out, so I couldn't click on them.
To add more of a headache, I purchased a 1TB Western Digital Studio Edition Drive to use as a Time Machine backup, about a month ago. I haven't opened the box yet because I've been busy, but now I'm reading all these posts saying that people are having a problem with this model, as well. I purchased it from MicroCenter, which states that it has to be returned within 30 days. Today is 11/23, and I bought the drive on 10/19. Of COURSE!!
Anyway, is there ANY solution to this?? My drives have never been dropped or subjected to a power outage. I'm pretty neurotic about always safely ejecting the drives, so I know that's not a problem. I just want to have my hard drives back, and most of all-- my film footage!!
Any advice/tips would be GREATLY appreciated!!
Nicole

Hi Nerowolfe,
Thanks for your quick response. The drives are indeed Firewire 800/400 drives, but they also have USB 2.0 on there. I always use Firewire 800 to transfer data, but in reading other people's postings about Western Digital drive issues, they suggested that the only way to "read" the drive after receiving one of these error messages is to connect through the USB port, rather than FireWire. My disk was still not mounted when I tried USB, but it was able to see it on Disk Utility, where I then performed "repair disk" and then received the disk error message.
What I'd like is for there to be some kind of software update on Western Digital to fix this-- they seem to have made an update for the Studio edition (that's what my 1TB is), but not for the Pro Editions (what I have), and that's where all of my media, unfortunately, is stored.

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