External hard drive (seagate) not working- keeps freezing laptop

Hello,

I have a SEAGATE external modem that has decided not to work any longer. I think it may have been unplugged suddenly instead of using the safely remove option.

It was originally coming up with an error saying I had to format it. (Which I did not do as I didn't want to lose any of the data on it) And I don't know how I did it, (possibly through command p) but I think I worked out it was in a RAW format not NTFS. If that makes any sense?


Now the problem is I can no longer see the ext hard drive when in my computer, (using my Asus laptop) it does show up in device manager under Disk Drives as Seagate External USB device and ST9500325AS and under USB Controllers as USB Mass storage device. And I can see it as local drive f: when I go into devices and printers.

I have also tried it on my hp desk top pc and it freezes nearly everything until I unplug the problem external hard drive and then everything runs normally again.

A few weeks ago I tested it using the online seagate tools and it said everything was fine and nothing was damaged and I could begin recovery. But I can't run the free RECUVA program I downloaded as when I select local drive (f:) to scan it says location is not available F: / is not accessible. The parameter is incorrect.

I did some digging around on google and did try a few of the more simple fixes to no avail. (I'm not excessively tech savvy but I can get by) So far I've tried to change the drive letter (f:) by going through computer management and disk management but it just freezes that and I can't do a thing. It says, Connecting to Virtual Disk Service... And then never connects.

Ive changed USB ports. I've changed cords. I've also uninstalled the driver through the device manager and then plugged the ext hard drive back in and let it re install the drivers itself, nothing except for the fact it made the sound it makes when something is plugged into a USB which it hadn't done for a while.

Is the problem the drive letter? Can I change the drive letter another way? If it's the ext hard drive... How can I recover the data? It's not majorly important but it would save me a lot of hassle and time if I can recover it easily enough.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks, Amie.

Also would like to add I can't Chkdsk from command p either now.