my computer wont recognize my external harddrive?

So, how did you "disconnect" it. If it is a USB connection and you just yanked it out you may have thrashed it as you need to disconnect the drive using software first.

Others are giving you good advice so I won't be redundant. Try another USB port or another device. If another device is detected then you may have toasted your controller on the disk.

Good Luck

If you have another drive of the same size that contains the data you want to save. You can clone or just copy the drive. If the drive is larger that the drive with the data, you can still clone the drive or just copy it. The cost is all dependent on the drive itself. If you want to copy or clone the drive with the same size drive and it is an internal drive. HD Clone free version works well. If an external drive is where the data is, you need to find someone that will put both drives on a computer and copy the information with Total Commander file transfer system. It can be downloaded from the net.....

on the start menu right click on "My Computer" scroll down and click on "Manage"on the left click on "Disk Manager"on the right look for your external drive.it may say "Unknown Unallocated Space".this is the problem.you may have Cancelled out the drive,and now everything that was on it is gone..you need to redetect your drive by right click on the partition,scroll down and click on "New Partition"then format using the NTFS formatt.follow the directions to get your drive back on line.

Have you tried "detect new hardware" in the control panel?

Try another cable and another USB port.

Have you formally introduced them?

Sometimes, they're just shy.