I am a beginner to the Linux OS. I bought a new hard drive and did a fresh Ubuntu install on it. On my other hard drive I run Window XP Pro. Now, I use an external hard drive for backups mainly, but since I had all my music files on it, I decided to plug it into ubuntu and transfer all my music so I could listen to my music using rythmbox (i believe thats the name). All the music on the hard drive however could would not open, the folder it was in on the external hard drive was empty (i got a message saying that the files in that directory could not be opened). I am use to "safely removing" the ext. hard drive (in Windows) so i tried to do the the same in ubuntu by right clicking the icon on the desktop and selecting unmount. I learned that was not the same. Now the my external hard drive will not be recognized by either my ubuntu or windows hard disks and on top of that for some reson or another i lost about 2/3 of my music files on my windows drive. All the directories to my music files are there but the music files themselves are not (Lucky I have all the music files backup on my laptop as well). My questions:

Why would'nt ubuntu recogvize my music files and how do i get ubuntu to do so?

How can i get my hard drive recognized again?

What in the world happened to my music files on my windows drive?