Why can I see my external hard drive?

For 2 years or more I've had an external hrad drive to back up my Imac. One day I got a message that there had not beeb a back up for for a really long time  ( I have it on automatic).
Ever since, I have not been able to see the external hard drive on mi Imac and have not been able to do regular back ups.
First I turned off, on, restart computer and tried to see if it showed up on another computer, which it did.
What could the problem be?  It was working just fine.
Please help
Thanks

EHD's can crash. First thing I'd recommend though is to do 2-3 SMC resets. Shut down the computer, then remove the power cord from both the wall plug and back of the computer, wait 15-20 seconds and restart normally and test.
If that fails use another cable to connect the drive, if that fails open Disk Utility and see if the EHD can be seen. If that fails then replace the drive. I would STRONGLY recommend 2 backups, use Time Machine on disk 1 and then use a create a clone using either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner on the other drive. When it comes to backing up, redundancy is smart. Would you trust your bank if  they only had one form of backup of all your money??

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