Harddisk shows a gray icon instead of normal yellow icon

[SherryR]

Hi guys,

I was hoping you guys could help me out. I recently purchased the My Passport Essential SE. Today, i was backing up my computer data and left it alone, but my Macbook Pro went to sleep because the battery had been drained out. This means that the HDD was still plugged into the MBP when it went to sleep.

When i connected my MBP to the power supply and 'woke it up', I realised that the icon for my HDD became grayed out with some funky-car fuel looking thing attached to it, a far cry from the normal yellow icon that usually represents a HDD in a mac (see picture below).

And now i cant back up my HDD or access the files in it. It does, however, come up with the normal yellow icon on another Macbook pro that I have. Simply speaking, it works well in another laptop, just not mine.

Im hoping you guys could help me, because my macbook pro is dying (battery problems) and I have to back up my data before something happens to it.

Thanks all!

[Alucardx23]

Try to open the Disk Utility and see if the repair disk option is available, also check if using another USB port helps. 

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/866/session/L3RpbWUvMTMzNzE4MDMyMS9zaWQvZEhuRjFnWWs%...