My external hard drive is not accessible in Windows 11

[joe_heart_cow]

Yesterday I plugged in my external hard drive to my computer and was surprised to discover that it couldn't be accessed. I have very important data stored in it. However, when I attempted to access it, I received an error message stating that the drive is not accessible.
Is there any way to recover the data?
Thank you!

 

[Bighorn]

If it is a USB connection are you plugging into a USB 2 [black center in plug] or USB 3 [blue center in plug]? Have you check Device manager that the ports are enabled? Have you tried the drive in a different computer? Have you check Disk Management that it has a partition and is formatted?

 

[snail_helmet]

Yes, that's the first step. Connect the external drive to another PC. Does it work correctly?