My computer doesn't recognise the external hard drive

[Beorn]

I was off on a 2-day vacation, and today that I came back, after opening my PC it wasn't recognising the external hard drive, even if I restarted my PC, turned off ans on the hard drive etc.

What can be done? I have more than 150 gb of mods, photos, videos and such stuff....

[29 days later]

Sounds like you might have a drive letter assignment problem.

Right-click on My Computer.

Click on Manage.

Choose Disk Management from the left column.

Try to find the external drive in the lower window. It should be "Disk 1" or some other number (but not Disk 0).

Then choose Device Manager from the left column.

Choose Disk drives and from here you can change the letter if need be or add one.

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If the drive is not seen there, check under Universal Serial Bus Controllers (if the drive is connected via USB). The drive should appear as a USB Mass Storage Device.

If a yellow ! icon is displayed next to it, double-click on the drive.

A Properties window will appear and will probably say "This device is not working properly" and will give either (Code 28) or (Code 10).

If Code 10 appears, the drive has most probably failed. Verify by trying the drive with another USB cable or port, or on another computer. You can begin a drive replacement order online.

If Code 28 appears, you will need to test the drive on another computer. If the drive works fine on another computer, there are a few steps to follow:

Open a Windows Explorer window (right-click on Start > Explore).

In the address bar, type c:\windows\inf and press Enter.

Right-click on the file INFCACHE.1.

Select Properties.

Click on the "Security" tab.

Click "Edit" to edit permissions.

Click "Add" to add Group or User name.

Delete the file.

Reboot and the file should be rebuilt, correcting the problem.