Ok, so I had a internal harddrive, in an external case. There was a problem with the power supply, so I went out and bought another case and it worked fine. That was like 2 months ago. Now, it turns on and the computer recognizes that something is plugged into the USB, but not a drive. No whirling is heard from it at all. I tried to re-up drivers but none were found. Erg. So yeah, any ideas on what is up?

Ok I'm far from a techie but I had a somewhat similar experience with an external drive. I had a Maxtor Firewire external (well still do) that all of a sudden was recognized as being connected but not as a drive. I tried every damn thing since it had a ton of music on it but it simply was not recognized. One day I hooked it up to a Windows ME computer and it was recognized (all of my stuff was XP). I moved all of the files from the external to an internal and noticed that it kept hanging on specific files. Long story short once those files were deleted everything worked on the XP again. I'm not exactly sure why but that's what happened.

Also, could the power settings have been reset via an inadvertent patch?

Undoubtedly unhelpful...but good luck!

I'd also check the internal HD cords - unplug them and plug them back in. Sometimes if you have a twitchy connection moving the thing around is enough to get it working again, like yours did. Long-shot, but worth a try.

Does it tell you that you need to format it?

Have you tried taking it out of the case and putting it into a machine as a slave drive?