Buffallo 500 G Drive showing up as CD Drive?

[robomatic]

I have about a 5 YO external drive that has worked well for years.  All of the sudden, when I plug it into USB, I hear the usual sound, but in My Computer,  it doesn't show up with my other drives; it shows up below and has a CD icon.

Under Disk Management, I can find the drive, but it has no drive letter assigned to it and it shows 100% Free Space, which is incorrect.

I wonder what happened and if there's anything I can do to fix it or access it with some kind of utility program?  At the moment, it's looking like I may have to send it off for data recovery!!!

[Texturtle]

This is almost certainly a problem with the USB drivers in XP, not the drive. Try connecting the drive to a different computer to confirm.