My computer does not recognize removable storage devices

Sounds like your optical drive is defective and is no longer being assigned a letter as it isn't being detected properly. Replacing an optical drive is easy and inexpensive.

Do you know if yours is SATA or IDE?

answer: I have no idea about my optical drive and no knowledge what SATA or IDE is. I ultimately did system restore and that corrected the problem. So would that mean that it wasn't the optical drive??

Yes, that would indicate some sort of Windows configuration error as being the original problem. Typically, Windows doesn't just drop an optical drive that is always attached to the system.

The optical drive may be flaky. Keep an eye on it for stability's sake. Good luck!