external hard drive trouble

[buckshot]

i come to you for help as i know there are some very tech savvy folks here. I have a buffalo external hard drive (hd-hc500u2) 500gb that i've been using for my photos and itunes and such. I'm going to upgrade next month to a 2 tb harddrive because i'm filling this one up with raw uncopressed photos. BUT there's a problem. I think i hurt the ext HD's feelings because now the damn thing won't connect to my macbook. I plug it into the computer via USB and hear the hard drive start to spin but the icon never comes up on my desktop. this presents a problem because i have photos to upload and edit and there are literally 10,000 pictures on it right now and only some are backed up or printed. anyone have any help or knowledge they can pass along to me or any words to console me?