trouble with external harddrive

[doktor5000]

Also, if this is a drive will connect often, you might want to consider putting in an entry in your /etc/fstab file for that drive.

Uhmm, why? F.ex. KDE device notifier allows automounting of known devices with just a click, no need to fiddle with fstab and permission managment ...

[STUMPOFWAR]

As I am messing around I see two things.

MCC says the HD is empty and does not have a partition nor does it display it's drive label/name.

System Settings ---> Removable devices.....displays the drive label but refuses to mount it

It sounds like the MBR is corrupt.
I'd use photorec to try and get the pictures off it then testdisk to try to repair it, both are in the repositories.
If you've got enough disk space you could also use dd to make an image of the drive before working on it.

Sorry for the break in responding...I had a family member go into the hospital so this took a back seat. I ended up doing half of this.......I made an image already as backup....I then ran photorec to pull out the photos. I am a giant photobug (210gbs worth) so I left photorec running for ever....it recovered tons of photos, but not sure how complete the recovery was as my folder structure is gone.

I had a few people tell me to try testdisk....which I will do today-ish if I don't have to run to the hospital after work.

Thank you so much everyone.

Shawn