Make sure the lead/s that attach to your hard drive are securely seated
if your computer came with a motherboard disc the drivers could be on it

click start right click on computer device manager look through all of your devices if you see a yellow question mark?or exclamation mark ! or red x
right click to reinstall drivers or

if you can see your usb but its not working
ports(com&lpt)right click update driver
hope this helps

click start control panel administrive tools ,computer management ,device manager look through all of your devices if you see a yellow question mark?or exclamation mark ! or red x
right click to reinstall drivers or

if you can see your usb but its not working
ports(com&lpt)right click update driver

sometimes the wires inside the cable will be damaged due to bending or stretching or placing heavy equipment upon the cable,

just replace the cable of the hard disk, when you plugged the external disk drive you got that windows could recognize the USB device change the cable everything should work fine again,

check the USB leads that attach to the motherboard usually red-white-green-black make sure they are securely seated and have no dust build up on them dust will cause static and a lot of unforeseen problems

if this fails to fix the problem

you might have to install a usb 2 or 3 card they are cheap and easy to install you can buy these on Ebay very cheap


hope this helps you