computer woes

[jedi_of_urth]

Okay, so the story goes something like this, I wanted to transfer some files from one of my external hard drives to my mom's laptop. However I clicked 'safely eject' for the wrong drive but didn't realize it until after I'd unplugged the one I was transferring stuff from. It worked just fine when I plugged it into my mom's computer anyway so I figured it hadn't been a problem.

But then I plug it back into my computer and it keeps telling me "device not recognized" and after trying to get it to work I tried it on my mom's computer again and now it would recognize the drive either. I've tried about every option I've seen when I searched for a solution and nothing has worked.

Yes, yes, I have a degree in computer science, but hardware is so not my thing it's not even funny. So anyone on my f-list who does understand this stuff? Help me out, please.

Comments

[keilinger.livejournal.com]

If you havent' already,

1. Try rebooting with it plugged in.
2. Try plugging the device in to another USB port than the one you typically use, preferably one in another location on your case.
3. Open up control panel > system > device manager; click view>show hidden; and see if you can find the hard drive listed under something like 'disc drives' or 'portable devices' or something else likely. If you can find it, right click and click "scan for hardware changes"; keep checking back to see if you can get it to show up in "my computer".
4. A lot of hard drives come with software you can install, and among that might be a recovery software. If you didn't install it off the hard drive you can check the manufacturer's website for the software.

I would try everything I could with windows before resorting to 3rd party programs to recover it. I'll let you know if I think of anything else to try. Let me know if it works out, good luck.

[jedi_of_urth]

Okay, so after I asked for help on this I decided I apparently wasn't in the mood to actually deal with it any more so I didn't until just now. But fyi, I was right about the completely obvious solution.

Unplug the external harddrive. I certainly can't prove that all the other things I did didn't help the situation, but when I finally just tried out my duh solution it made it work again.

So score one for no brainer solutions that take forever to come up with.