Issues with my external hard drive

I’m trying to connect it via USB or maybe even E-SATA... I can see the drive showing up in Device Manager, but for some reason, it just won't show up in File Explorer. Or rather, nothing appears in "This PC" at all. Instead, I just get this "Program not responding" error message popping up.
After I properly disconnect the external hard drive, my PC seems to go back to functioning normally, I guess.
Does anyone happen to know a fix for this issue?

Maybe try checking Disk Management under your Administrative Tools to see if the drive is actually showing up there. If you don't have anything important on it—and I'm assuming you don't—you could attempt to format it. Though, honestly, it might be worth swapping out the USB cables first; sometimes a faulty cord is the culprit behind all this trouble.