Can't see external hard drive in Windows Explorer

[manishdk]

I have an external hard drive that I am trying to plug in the HP laptop that I have which is running on Windows Vista. After connecting it, I can see the device listed under the Disk drives in Device Manager and when I check its Properties, it says that the drive is running properly. I have also tried the option to reload the drivers and it says that the drive is up-to-date. Now the problem is that, this same drive is not able to list in Windows Explorer and therefore I cannot see any folders or anything. Is there anyone who has some solution for this?

[Scott2580]

Did you check whether the external HDD that you have is assigned with a drive letter in the Drive Management area? It could be also that the drive must be formatted in FAT32 format and if the drive is formatted with a MAC then Vista may not be able to mount it. If you can connect the drive in any other computer then see if it is getting listed their and you can copy the files from the same drive. After that use drive management to delete the parition and then recreate the parition and then assign a drive letter to it. This way the external drive will be listed in Windows Explorer back again.