External Drive connected but not seen or accessible

[Timoshenko]

Help. My external drive (which works fine) keeps disappearing from then Finder window and I cannot connect to it. It usually works fine, and this is an intermittent issue. I have time machine set up to back up to it and that usually works. Recently I have just restarted my macbook pro (6 months old). However.. I tried restart - that didn't work. I tried shutting down and restarting and that didn't work.
Any ideas anyone?

 

[Kaveman]

Sounds like a faulty drive enclosure or cable.