Can't find old HDD

[gold_finger]

My laptop still runs Windows 7 (please, don't tell anybody ).

Plenty of people dual-boot or continue to need/use Windows for various things.  Nothing wrong with that.

This computer shows that it's physically there so I'm not really sure what I'd have to do in Windows to "fix" it.  Any thoughts on that?  I'll read your link this evening (WAY past my bedtime already).

It is a strange problem and I've never run into it myself.  The link I referenced tells you what to do in Windows, so just follow those instructions.

Before trying to run any fix, see if you are able to access and use the files from Windows 7.  I'd imagine (but don't know for sure) that if something is preventing access in Linux, it would also cause same problem in Windows.  If you don't have any problem in Windows, then I'd definitely recommend you follow instructions below before you mess with it at all.

One thing you might want to do before messing further with the drive is to make a cloned image of it.  If you have another drive of equal or greater size, this tool seems to come highly recommended by many people in forums:  Macrium Reflect.  Install it to your Windows OS and use it to make a clone of the drive.  Then try recovering access to your files and if something goes terribly wrong you've got the original backed-up.  (You might be better off leaving the original alone and try your recovery efforts on the cloned drive instead.)  I've never used the software myself, so you may need to do some research if the options to clone that partition are not clearly obvious.

In a nutshell, what I would do if the original DOES work in Windows, but not in Linux:

*  Clone the drive
*  Test ability to access cloned drive from Windows
*  Test ability to access cloned drive from Linux
*  If can't access from Linux, boot back into Windows and run repair procedure outline in link to the cloned drive and see what happens.  (Leave original drive alone if it works in Windows.)

Good luck.