My external hard-drive was working fine until I accidentally dropped it onto the ground.

However after dropping it, I turned it on and it booted up fine, no weird noises etc. So I was somewhat hopeful that perhaps no damage had been done until I plugged it into my computer.
It pops up in the toolbar saying that hard-drive is connected but the auto-launch doesn't show up and it doesn't appear in my computer so I have no way of accessing it.

I have tried going to computer management - device manager - USB controllers - mass storage, then uninstalling and re-installing it but it hasn't made a difference.

Any suggestions on whether it is destroyed?:( or if there is some way of rescuing it?:D

Thanks in advance.

The Firmware chip has probably been damaged;

When you plug the HD in "plug and play" will detect that something has been connected hence "toolbar saying that hard-drive is connected", but

The Firmware must then interact with the PC.

Any ways to confirm this for sure?

Does this mean that I can't get the data off it and its pretty much a big paper weight?

Shutdown and restart PC with drive attached

Go into device mgr and see if it listed there or any yellow marks

Or listed in windows explorer