MY MAC WON'T RECOGNIZE MY EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE

Hello. I'm the main user in my mac mini so I was trying to avoid my girlfriend from using the external drive, so looking around signed with my girlfriend user, I controled click the external HD icon in the finder and click on information, then I saw an option that I thought could give me the chance to avoid her from looking around at the external drive with her user, after several times trying to do so with my name and my password (I'm supossed to be de administrator) it kept telling me that I was not a sistem administrator. the external drive kept working but I ejected it to see if what I did would work (the other user not beeing able to see into my external HD) but my surprise is that no longer my mac recognizes the external HD. Do you have any clues on what is going on? It can be somethig with the permissions because looking at it with disk utilities it says that no owner activated neither S.M.A.R.T. Can anyone help me?
thank you
Hugo

Follow the instructions in the section of this FAQ which is relevant to your situation.
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MY MAC WON'T RECOGNIZE MY EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE

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