My netbook won't read my external HDD?

Hello,

I have a Lacie external hard drive which I am trying to connect to my netbook. It has been working fine since I bought it and I've been having no problems up until now. Yesterday I took said hard drive to my place of work in order to print some documents and to cut a long story short it ended up falling no more than 6 inches onto carpet. Today, I have tried opening the "explore" tab that makes itself apparent when one right-clicks the windows start button (I apologise for my non technical language - I am technologically inept at the best of times) to search for the drive but to no avail. When I plug the HDD USB into the netbook it makes that sound of acknowlegement as it usually does, the HDD itself is still switching on and making it's own noise but nothing happens. I am aware that I may have just broken the device, in which case, does anyone knoe how I may salvage anything from it?

Thank you in advance for any assistance and also for taking the time to read my query.



Just a brief update - netbook now accepting HDD but now an error message keeps popping up saying something about a delayed write failiure and when I try to get into any files another message comes up saying something about a semaphore being timed out or some such? I'm so confused now I don't know what my name is or where I live, but for those problems I shall see a psychiatrist. Please help!

Thank you.