My Computer Isn't Reading My External Harddrive

What brand is the hard drive? Try another port on the pc or another pc. It could be that the external drive has failed. That's not good as the data on it will be lost. That happened to me just this past couple of weeks...

Yeah, Try on another computer or even a different usb slot/firewire on the same computer.

I've tried different USB Ports and another computer. Still the same. Is there any way I can recover the information stored on it?

The harddrive make is Verbatim

When I plugged it into my laptop it showed that it was installing software for it, even though I have used it here (on the laptop) many times.

I unscrewed the harddrive and saw that the power switch and a bit of the motherboard are burnt. Can I still recover the information?

It sounds like the circuitry is burn on the pcb board for your drive case. The hard drive may still be good and accessible but you would have to order one of these and plug into your usb port to access it:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Or you can buy another hard drive enclosure and put the hard drive in it. Your device may still be under warranty but the issue is you wont get your data back. What I am suggesting to you is to help you recover your data 1st. If you have no data you have to have then just rma it if its still under warranty.

If that hard drive is a 3.5" you could install it in a desktop pc and recover your data that way.

If none of this works then the hard drive could be bad too. Hope that helps...