Windows 7: My External Hard Drive Isn't Recognized

Yesterday, I backed up everything on my computer because I was going to restore it and format the drive. So I transfered everything over to my Seagate 500gb hard drive.

Once I finished formatting and reinstalling windows, I installed all my neccessary chipset drivers, ect.. and connected my external hard drive but it wasn't recognized. It shows up as connected and the green light is on, but nothing in "my computer". I tried to set my external drive to a letter in disk management but it doesn't give me the option. Please someone help, I have tons of movies, music and school work on my drive and need it to be transfered over.

Here are some pics to understand the situation.

http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/9079/capb.png
http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/9454/captureaj.png
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/880/capture2n.png

The drive has probably no drive letter. Try to assign one with (under Partition tab > Change Letter): http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-...n-manager.html

I downloaded it and it found the external drive and it could be opened in the explorer inside the application but it didn't fix the problem. I set the drive to a letter and applied it, but it didn't show up in my com]puter.

I had this, Format it then reassign a drive letter if formatting fails.

Do note it has 2 partitions, you could merge them if there not important.

I don't want to format because I have all my music,movies, and school work on the drive.

Have you tried it on a separate pc?

I've tried it on two and those computers didn't recognize it either. I then tried a 8gb thumb drive and it was recognized on all 3 computers.

What should I do?

Try recover your data using software then format it.

What format is it using FAT, FAT32 or NTFS?

What software?

Wait, aparntly Tweak UI may fix the problem, have a look at this software, just reasign the drive letter using this or disk manager

Totalidea Software :: Downloads :: Tweak Windows 7 - Tweak Windows Vista - Tweak-7 - Tweak7 - TweakVI - Tweak-Vista - TweakVista - TweakXP - Tweak-XP - Tweak XP - TweakUI - Outlook Backup - Outlook Notes - FireTune

"Hi there
I dont know if this will work for you but looking on the web I came accross someone who had a similar problem they fixed it as follows.
They installed Tweak UI and then

She I was able to get the drive recognized using "Tweak UI", clicking on My Computer, Drives,and check marking Drive F. It did the trick.
Hope this helps
Kindest Regards Tony B." (Kioskea.net)