I have been having issues with Windows 7 on three different machnes not recognizing ext hard drives that were formerly recognized. Oddly, the drives can be seen in Disk Management but not with the correct labels I assigned. I read a fix online that suggested re-assigning a drive letter to the ext drive and voila! now Windows sees the drives ..however, all the folders are reported as "shortcuts". Great, so doing a 3 hour chkdsk to see if this fixes it.
Thanks to the fellow who cries "backup". As an old tech I cry the same to my customers. However, I will add one caveat "Backup to two or three or FOUR locations" or you will be crying a sad song. What good is a backup to external media that suddenly Windows does not see?