I have a 160gb usb 2.0 external hard drive which I attach to my home PC. The hard drive contained approx 70gb music, photos, movies.

I attached the hard drive to my father's PC because I needed to move files to his system which is a 5 year old HP Pavillion. However, when I went to view the contents of the drive it had been renamed from USBTECH to HP_PAVILION and the contents are pretty much identical to the structure of my father's C drive - i.e. 'program files' and 'windows' folders. The music, photos - all exisiting files had vanished.

I wasn't too worried because I guessed that his older PC may not be USB 2.0 compatible and that I just could not see the true contents.

However, I re-attached the drive to my own PC and it is still called HP_PAVILION and still doesn't contain any of my files. I have been on the web all day since trying to find a solution but I'm at the end of my tether

The only progress I've made is spending £23 on a product called File Recover. It has detected 6791 files (I was expecting more) but it is taking FOREVER to restore files. It is not giving a time estimate but I reckon it will take WEEKS to restore it al at the current speed.

Someone please HELP. I'm out of ideas and lost without my music!

It happened to me before too. It's usually happens when you use a USB 2.0 drive in USB 1.1. 1.1 is much slower than 2.0. It takes a while before actually writing the MTF (Master File Table) which records the list of files. It probably got messed up if you pulled the drive out while it's writing the MTF. Try this. Open Command Prompt (Start, Run - Type cmd) Type the drive letter and a colon while on the command screen screen, eg. E:. Then type "CHKDSK /F." It'll probably take a couple minutes on USB 2.0. It always works for me.
Type what is underlined. "E" is the drive's letter.
Example to type: C:\Documents and Settings\Account Name\> E:
E:\>CHKDSK /F