Quote - Your external drive may have had the usb connection fried. :(   if that has happened you should be able to remove the drive from the external enclosure and mount it in the computer case , even if temporarily to copy files off it.

Yes, this happened with a couple of my Western Digital MyBooks and I ended up removing the drive. Fortunately the drive was fine and the files were easily accessed. I would try removing the drive and testing it that way first.