basically the external hard drive stopped autoplaying with its contents as well as stopped appearing on my computer,, so i went into administrative toolss>computer management>disk management from there i selected an option to extend volume, but i chose not to format the drive, however it did assign it a letter drive....everytime i click on the letter drive that NOW says local disk E:, as opposed to some number/letter sequence before

1) How can I reverse this?
2) How can I view whats on the external hard drive?
3) what should i do next?

Look in a Hardware support forum instead of Comp Sci and Software Development perhaps?