USB Problems

Im having a hard time with my external hard drive. It is a simpletech one that has 320 gb's.

When i got it, i plugged it into my computer and backed up stuff, etc without a problem. It worked great. Recently i decided to plug it into my laptop to back up the stuff on there. I had tried to back stuff up but it didnt work, no worries.

Now my problem occured. When i plugged it back into my computer, it will not even recognize its existence. What i mean by that is i dont get the beep to confirm its been plugged in, and i cannot find it through "device manager" or even when i right click on the my computer icon and go through the "manage" section. Nothing shows up anywhere on my computer.

Might anyone know how i can get this to show up? All of the usb ports are "working properly" and i have even tried plugging my mouse and printer into all of them, all of which still work. Help please because i cant listen to any music without it!!!

Thanks
Philip

 

Im sorry i forgot to mention my computer. Its a p4m80-m4 motherboard and i run windows xp sp2. The hard drive is a SimpleTech External Hard Drive (no other information on box)

 

have you tried it on another comp to make sure it is still working properly? have you tried a different usb cable? does the power cable seem fine? also, you didn't happen to unplug the drive while it was reading or writing data to the drive? - g/, sos

 

Yeah, I tried it in a few other computers. Do you really think that a bad cable could be the culprit? I had e-mailed the company and they told me that it sounds like the device. If this is the case, might anybody know how i can get my information (papers, music, pics, etc) off of it? Thanks