My Macbook Pro doesn't recognize my external hard drive

I had my external HD attached to my MBpro when I attempted to empty trash. The trash window showed it emptying thousand upon thousands of files (way more than was in the bin) and had a negative sign in front of the number of items being deleted. I canceled the emptying, but now the computer won't recognize the HD. It appears in Disk utility but not in desktop or sidebar. What happened and how do I fix it?

In Disk Utility, try using the Mount button in the top menu.
Disconnect the external drive, turn it off, wait about 1 minute, reconnect, and turn it back on. While waiting, restart the computer.
Disk Utility – Force Mount Disk

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