My external hard drive was connected to my cpu when windows did one of there forced upgrades that requires a system restart. I didn't catch this and stop it before the system restarted itself... needless to say the hard drive wasn't properly removed before the shut down(all windows fault). Now when I try to plug in my external hard drive my Cpu freezes trying to read it. It never even recognizes it otherwise I would try and re_format the external. I have 2 gb of ram so my cpu shouldn't struggle to read it. This is the second external hard drive I have had this happen too... so help please I can't afford to keep buying these things.