Lost external hard drive

Use XP Home SP-2. I have an external drive connected via USB port. When I open My Computer it does not appear but If I open my system folder in the control panel it shows Up. How do I get it back????

 

By system folder do you mean the device manager? The problem could be that another drive in your PC is or has used the same drive letter in the past and windows is 'saving' it for that drive. You can change the drive letter's that many drives use. Follow the instructions below.

Right click on My computer and select management or go to Control Panel\Administrative Toosl\Computer Management.

Look in the window that opens up and you should see System Tools, Storage, Services and Applications. Look under Storage and click on disk management. If your flash drive is being detected, it will show up on the right side of the screen as well as most of your other storage drive type devices.
Right click on the flash drive (it may also say removable drive). You will get a 'Change drive letter and paths' option. Select that and a window will come up. Click on the current drive letter for that flash drive and then click the 'Change' button.
A new window should come up that allows you to set that drive to just about any drive letter. Try E, F, or G in that order(depends on what other drives you already have in the PC). Click Ok on all the windows that have that option or just close any windows that don't

Then try to access the flash drive on the new drive letter.

Hope this helps.

 

Lost Hard Drive

Since asking for help I think I found my problem. I use a WD 500GB external drive and I was unaware that I should click on the hardware icon on the task bar,click stop and then unplug the device before shutting down the PC and then rebooting.