My external HD isn't working properly...what do I do?

So I have a laptop that died, and I took the hard drive out and put it in an enclosure. I plugged it into my other computer, and it worked. It worked wonderfully. Then I safely removed the drive, now it won't work again. It starts up, and in the Device Manager window under disk drives, it shows up there. But in My Computer, it's not there, and in the Disk Management window, it's not showing up. I really need to get some songs that I was working on off of this HD, and I can't afford to go somewhere to get my info recovered.

Can anyone help me? With a slow and concise explanation...because when it comes to the hardcore computer stuff, I'm definitely NOT a pro.

Start with the easiest thing first, unplug the hard drive, restart the computer then plug in the usb drive after everything starts up on your computer.

I just tried that, and there were no changes. It's still not showing up anywhere.

Okay, I think it's showing up as a DVD drive. It's showing a drive E: in my disk management window, and I only have one drive. And it's an 80 gig hard drive, and it's showing that this DVD drive that is E: has 80 gigs. How do I access this Hard Drive if this is the case?

Okay, so I don't think that last post was correct. It still is showing up in the device manager, under disk drives, but when I click on the properties, and go to the volumes tab, and hit populate, it says unreadable.