Hey there, lostit01.
Have you checked if the drive is recognized by the Device Manager:
How to access Device Manager in Windows. If "yes" does it happen to have a yellow exclamation mark, or does it say anything different that "the device is working normally"?
I'd recommend that you try a different mass storage device with that laptop, to see if the same thing happens again. You could also download the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool and run some tests on the drive, just to check if there's anything out of the ordinary.
Make sure that the driver for your USB controller is up to data and the chipset driver as well.
Hope that helps. Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD