Lame, I know, but I was feeling really emotional at the time.

I bought a WD External Hard drive from Overstock - refurbished, but I'm frugal. My husband calls me cheap. Toe-MAE-toes....toe-MAW-toes.

I put EVERYTHING on this drive, all working files, graphics, you name it. I've been meaning to buy offsite backup for it, but haven't had a lot of luck finding something that supports external HDs. (see next post)

Yesterday I plug everything in, and my I:/ drive is just gone. When I plug it in, my system (Vista...of course) won't recognize it, it has no drivers, there are no drivers to be downloaded to make it work. I'm stuck. So I Google.

I went through several different troubleshootings posts along with their owners, and they all said the same thing. I don't like digging through what didn't work for others, instead I just post what did work for me.

Check the plug. Check the cable. Light coming on? Sounds normal? If that's the case, try this:

- Control Panel
- Administrative Tools
- Computer Mgmt
- Disk Mgmt

See your hard drive there? If not...sorry, not your solution. If yes (you may see it twice - ignore that for now)...then YAY!

Right click & explore. Then go check out your "My Computer" to see if it's there.

That did it for me!