External hard drive USB boot - can I recover old files

Hi,

I am completely new to ubuntu and installed it on my netbook this evening. I however created a USB boot using a 250gb external hard drive instead of my 4gb usb pen. I now cannot access my old files on the external hard drive as no computer sees the hard drive as an external drive. How do I return my hard drive into acting like a hard drive again and have I lost all my old files?

Please help, 5 years of collected work data was on the drive so I really hope someone can help.

regards

craigthebairn

You should be able to see the external hard drive if you boot the Ubuntu Live CD.

You probably can't see it in Windows because it is a different file system.