Windows 7 - Can't access my hardrive

Hi there, I've looked through some other posts but I just can't seem to fix my problem.

Currently, I have a 500gb Lacie external hd which was working fine a couple days ago but now it won't show up in my computer. So I went to Disk Management and it turns out that it had no letter assigned, I tried to change it but the option was grayed out. I also went to "cmd" and typed in Diskpart and list volume/disk. The hard drive doesn't show up under volume though, only under disk. Is there anything else I can do?

Thanks

What format does the drive have? I am going to bed in a few minutes, so I will not be around till morning, but hopefully others can help you.

How do I find the format of the drive?

Once you typed in;
diskpart
list disk - select the disk ie;
select disk 1 - and then type;
active - and then
assign

Once the disk is selected, type;
detail disk
this will show the format of the drive.
Hope this helps

Once I typed in active, it said no disk selected even though I typed select disk 1. Anything else I can do?

After I typed detail disk, this is what showed up:

ST350083 0AS USB Device
Disk ID: 2B682E15
Type: USB
Status: Online
Path: 0
Target: 0
LUN ID: 0
Location path: Unavailable
Current read-only state: No
Read-only: No
Boot Disk: No
Pagefile disk: No
Hibernation file disk: No
Crashdump disk: No
Clustered disk: No

There are no volumes.

I would suggest using test disk to extract your data, clean the drive, reformat and copy the data back over.

What is on the drive? A Linux distro? A previous version of Windows?

Nothing is on the drive. It's empty.

EDIT: I also forgot to mention that it was previously formatted by a Bell TV Satellite receiver.

in an elevated command prompt, type the following;

diskpart
list disk
select disk #
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=ntfs
assign
exit
exit