Cannot see files on external hard drive

[chop]

I have a 160gb usb 2.0 external hard drive which I attach to my home PC. The hard drive contained approx 70gb music, photos, movies.

I attached the hard drive to my father's PC because I needed to move files to his system which is a 5 year old HP Pavillion. However, when I went to view the contents of the drive it had been renamed from USBTECH to HP_PAVILION and the contents are pretty much identical to the structure of my father's C drive - i.e. 'program files' and 'windows' folders. The music, photos - all exisiting files had vanished.

I wasn't too worried because I guessed that his older PC may not be USB 2.0 compatible and that I just could not see the true contents.

However, I re-attached the drive to my own PC and it is still called HP_PAVILION and still doesn't contain any of my files. I have been on the web all day since trying to find a solution but I'm at the end of my tether

The only progress I've made is spending £23 on a product called File Recover. It has detected 6791 files (I was expecting more) but it is taking FOREVER to restore files. It is not giving a time estimate but I reckon it will take WEEKS to restore it al at the current speed.

Someone please HELP. I'm out of ideas and lost without my music!

[catgate]

There are limits to what a HDD will accept dependant upon what it is, how it is formatted and what sort of file system is being used.

I am not sufficiently versed in this, and I always have to go fiddling about to find the answer. However if you look up what the drive types are and the size of the HDDs, and post that information, someone will come strolling along before long who will be able to answer you more clearly. One thing that I can tell you is that you can not transfer NTFS files to FAT32.