External Hard Drive not visible

[Talk2Me]

I put one of my old WD IDE hard drives into an enclosure that I bought from Newegg. It connects via USB. I've been using it for awhile, but recently when I plugged it in, the bubble says that it's installed and ready for use, but the drive letter doesn't show up in Explorer. How do I access it if I can't see it. Any thoughts?

[Sylvander]

1. Can you access it from some other OS environment?
e.g. Load & run a FREE Linux distro [e.g. Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/downloading?release=desktop-newest&arch=i386&mirror=http%3A%2F%2Fubuntu.virginmedia.com%2Frelea ses%2F&debug=%5B%20country_US%20%2C+%20country_UK%20%2C+% 20continent_NA%20%5D&download-button=#19639095291043807168), or Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.net/get.php) ] from a live CD and access it there.
If it works there it's not a hardware problem, but something amiss with the Windows environment.

2. How do things look in "Device Manager" in Windows? [Which version of Windows?]
Display devices "By Connection" and expand the device tree [highlight the top device (the PC icon), then "Numlock + *" & "Numlock" again].

3. Can you afford to lose all the files on that drive?
If you can, you could re-initialise the drive in Windows.
Is it seen in "Start->Run->diskmgmt.msc"?