Will be here... but will be distracted

My external hard drive which has all my tax documents, family photos, family videos, recipes, my Password safe, and god knows, Rams documents from the past 15 years.... suddenly it doesn't appear in my drives. don't know why but there are things I can't get to now that have me on the verge of tears...

Trying to troubleshoot and get this thing working. I've tried changing USB ports to no avail.

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