Backup HDD now not recognised following OS reinstall

Hi all,
I recently backed up my data after having a few issues and re-installed my OS using the recovery disks (Toshiba laptop). Now my Buffalo hard drive is not recognized at all and I cannot retrieve the data I saved.

My missus wants to kill me as it had all out wedding/kids pics

Disk Management shows removable (E) no media but I cannot do anything else and am cautious not to do anything that might risk the data further.

Hoping someone can help me.

Thanks, Jilm

No exclamation marks.
Its plugged into a USB 2.0 port
Do I have to install peppermint? That's what originally started my issues, hence the OS re-install?

Hi Golden,

Sorry, long story - I installed peppermint 5 on my laptop and had issues with the bootup sequence (ie selecting which OS etc) and played around with it ultimately deleting wrong partitions etc hence why I decided to re install windows 7.

Sorry, I have gone through the tutorial and am downloading peppermint 5 (I assume that will work instead of peppermint 3?). Will post once I have followed the tutorial.

Thanks again!

Hi Golden,

I booted from the USB and started live mode. The tutorial seems to be more about recovering files from the laptop, where I am after files in my external HDD. I tried plugging the hard drive into a spare USB2.0 and it still did not recognise the drive. The drive did start-up and hum when I plugged it in, but no drive appeared in the file manager "places"

OK, Here it is...

The drive (E) is the one. It should actually be 2 TB, not 650 MB so that seems to be my issue.

I had a local computer shop plug into one of their systems and it came up correct and had all files accessible but they weren't helpful beyond that.

*bump* can anyone help?