Need help with 500Gig external HD

[Darth Menace]

Hi, I have a 500 gig external. my external/computer have worked well together until today. Today I plugged in my external and it usually says "External Hard Drive" as the drive name and works fine, but now it says "Removable Disc F" and when I click it it says "Please insert a disc into drive F". I have no idea why it suddenly changed, but do any of you guys have something I could do to change it back to normal?
thanks in advance

 

[TrainTrackHack]

Do you have any data on it that you really need to get off/haven't backed up? If not, I would just try reformatting and if that doesn't do it, partitioning the whole thing again.

BTW, does the drive appear in Disk Management? I assume you're using XP or Vista?

Also, have you tried it on any other computers?

 

[Pck21]

Yea try it on another computer and see what it does. If it comes up as the same "drive F" then its your external. If it comes up normal like before, then your desktop isn't recognizing it properly.