From: Eddie O'Connor eoconnor25@gmail.com
Ok....so after installing "smartmontools" on my CentOS machine...and connectiing this drive externally...i got positive reports from both the short and long tests...so the drive can obviously be "seen"....but when I look for it in the /dev/ directory...it doesn't show up.....I'm about to give the fdisk command line tools anonther shot....it allows me to format the drive...and to give it a file system...(ext4)....but it doesn't automaticcaly mount, nor can I format the drive using the Disk Utility in CEntOS.....I'm going to give D.B.A.N one more try since I was able to format it from the smartctl command line....hopefully it will "clear" whaever is locked up.
Is it USB powered? If so, maybe try another USB port... Did you check /var/log/messages for detection messages?
JD