External drive listed as mass storage not disk drive no current access

[Monalynn75]

I have a Toshiba 500 gb had that I currently use as storage 4 things like my music my pictures important documents and the last 3 years of my college education. Anytime I plugged it into my laptop the device manager listed it as a disk drive and it was found with all of the other drives listed under my computer.

I wanted some files off of it today and so I plugged it into my laptop windows stated it was looking for a driver for my device and after looking for an extremely long time stated that they couldn't find the driver for my device. For whatever reason unbeknownst to me windows recognized the external as a mass storage device and so it was trying to install the driver for a USB mass storage device but it said I couldn't find one.
At this point my external hard drive is listed under the USB part of device manager and on the computer instead of being located with the discs it is now in device and printers. It also has the little yellow troubleshooting triangle on it and each time I troubleshoot it it seems the only problem that shows is that it doesn't have the mass storage device driver. Now instead of bend recognized as a disc drive it is unknown I devices and printers abs us xriverr is USB ATA/ATAPI bridge...i don't even know what that is for. .lol

If there's anybody out there who knows what to do to help me fix my issue please post and tell me. All I want is my external back with Windows asking me what I'd like to do when I plug it into the USB port and not telling me I can't use it anymore cuz I don't know what I did wrong thank you

 

[Megahertz07]

Welcome to the Forum.

Did you try to plug the Toshiba in another computer?

It seems that you have an issue on the USB electronics (on Toshiba drive or computer port).
To help you, you must give us ALL the Toshiba hardware drive details (model number etc)

Don't try to fix it.
Post a whole image of disk management. Expand the columns so we can read them.
Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image - Windows 7 Help Forums
Post the image here as an attchment
Screenshots and Files - Upload and Post in Seven Forums - Windows 7 Help Forums