External hard disk not detected in My Computer and in Disk Management

I have a problem regarding my external Toshiba hard disk 500 GB where it can’t be detected in my computer and also disk management. I have formatted the external HD since I was asked to format it when an error popped up.
So I formatted it and after the formatting completed, I tried to connect the hard disk to my Windows Win 7 laptop. When I connect it to the laptop, it can’t be detected and yet the hard disk is blinking with its white light like it used to when it is connected to the laptop. I tried the disk management thingy, but it can’t detect my hard disk. I tried in other laptops but the result is same
What can I do to make it better? Please help me.
 
First off, how old is your Toshiba external HDD? Also, when it starts to spin up, do you hear any sort of clicking or whining noise?

If you hear any noises that sound off, it's possible your external HDD is failing.

When you formatted it, what file system did you use to do so? Because sometimes even if Windows can't detect it, I have had success with booting with a Ubuntu Live CD, and then connecting the external HDD in order to format it that way. It all has to do with how Windows formats HDD's and how Ubuntu and other Linux systems do.

If you can I recommend downloading Ubuntu onto a CD and boot to it on one of your computers, in the Live CD mode, so it doesn't install anything. Once its loaded, plug in the Toshiba and try to format it as NTFS (this is important, because Ubuntu doesn't use it as a native file system, so you need to make sure that NTFS is selected on the format window, not EXT4 or the other types of Linux OS File Systems)

If it doesn't work, post back here, and I will see if I can help you some more. Also feel free to PM me if you have any other issues.

Regards,
-Alex
 
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