my external hdd wont appear on desktop

[rex]

sorry mod for posting here. i cant find "new topic" tab on hardware section.

help. my portable HDD no longer mount on the desktop. the model is LACIE 12O gb usb/firewire FA PORSCHE. i tried repairing using disk utility but it says: Repairing disk for “LACIE”
** /dev/disk5s1
** Phase 1 - Read FAT
Unable to read FAT (Input/output error)
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)

Repair attempted on 1 volume
0 HFS volumes repaired
1 volume could not be repaired

i tried both firewire and USB connection and still doesnt mount on mac desktop. though the red LED is lit and there's a spinning sound when i listen closely.

what could be the problem and how to troubleshoot. need help on this.


TIA guys

[DaveB]

That's fairly clear: there's an I/O error (presumably a hardware fault) when trying to access the FAT32 ("MS-DOS") filesystem on the disk.
Your drive may be dead.

Have a look in the logs to see if there's anything else associated with "disk5":
Applications -> Utilities -> Console.app
search for "disk".

[gstark]

Sometimes it helps to pull the disk and attach it directly to a system, and we usually do this on a PC, rather than a Mac, because, there are more and better tools available for this.

But as Dave suggests, this is sounding like a fundamental problem in the hardware.