You don't say what model of drive it is, but I presume that what you have is almost certainly a SATA hard drive with a SATA < - > USB interface attached (eg a Seagate Backup Plus).
Hence, there are a number of possibilities as to what has gone up the Swanee...
1/ The drive is OK, but the partition table has been corrupted somehow.
- - -
To check if this is the case, take a look in Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer Management / Storage / Disk Management and see if there is any sign of the attached device and if there is any disk / partition info being displayed (even if it is incorrect).
NB Do not try to "fix" the disk here if it does show.
You will then need to use a partition recovery tool (iirc, Recova is only a
file recovery utility) to fix the external disks partition tables, maybe something like
Minitool Partition Recovery or
Partition Find & Mount.
2/ The drive itself is fine, but the SATA/USB interface has failed.
- - -
In this case, you can buy
one of these useful little widgets, crack open the drive box and remove the actual hard drive, then attach the drive to the pc with the aformentionedwidget.
Simples.
3/ The interface is fine, but the hard drive itself has failed.
- - -
Then you may well have no option but to write that cheque to Seagate
Best of luck!!!
WJ
PS Under
no circumstances put your disk in a freezer.