USB Mybook external HD

Ive had a usb wd mybook external HD for about 6 months. always works great until now. I unplugged it and connected to my laptop to install some software i had on it.

I ended up formatting the laptop to reinstall windows not realizing i had my external still hooked up. when installing it checked for partitions and such and found d and c as partitions. Not relizing D was my external drive i deleted that partion and reinstalled windows on the C: drive as normal. i didnt format the external drive so all info should still be on it.

I unplugged it from the lap top and put back on my desktop same usb port as before. it fired right up but no drive letter ever showed up in MY Computer.

I went into device manager and under HD devices shows my c drive and the external. checking the properties says it is working fine. after several reboots reconnects and such i still get nothing in (my computer) as far as a drive with a letter only shows C:

i downloaded the HD software from W/D's site and it sees the drive working good. I just cannot get a drive letter associated with this drive therefore i cannot access it and i have a ton of software on it that i really cannot afford to loose. can anyone help me figure this out or did deleteing that partition on the laptop kill my drive?

Thanks Haywood:yum:confused

 

hopefully it will be ok, and hopefully, it didn't format the h/d? try, start, control panel, administrative tools, computer management, storage, disk management. see if you can assign it a letter, or mark it as active (lower right hand side).

i'd play around with it a bit. if your not able to do anything, you might be able to get at your data with some recovery software, then reformat the h/d. i'd use this as a last resort though. i'm sure someone will come around, with other opinions. anyway, g/l - sos

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=152931 <-- another thread, that has recovery software listed (sorry, i'm being lazy). - sos

 

Im in luck I had some old w/d disk for hardware management it had a data recover option.
keep in mind this program was for an enternal hard drive that was about 8 years old i bought.
outta curiosity i ran the program. unfortunatly i lost all the cool programs i had stashed away but it did re letter my drive and and show up in (MY Computer).:major and thank god im not a total dork I had backed up my apps folder on the external drive to my wifes secondary drive in DEC. last year:cool so my losses were minimum. thanks for your reply and I have it under control now this post can die

well until i pull another stupid move.:yum

Thanks
Haywood:wave

 

... but I want my data... that ERASES all of it, correct? :|

 

and that's besides the point, it shows up as have 465.75GB while it's 500G so all of my data is still there I cant get to it though