External hard drive not appearing on desktop

Unfortunately, Mad Dog Multimedia went out of business years ago, and no longer provide support services or documentation for any of their products.

Unless you can find another one of these external drive cases on a sale rack somewhere, or being sold used by an individual, your chances of finding the original manual are extremely slim.

Mad Dog is, unfortunately, out of business by all indications and there is no support available from them. I suspect that Windows 7 will not have a driver that is compatible with the enclosure's interface. Depending upon what brand/model of actual hard drive is inside the enclosure (Western Digital, Seagate, whatever) you may be able to dismantle the enclosure, remove the actual disk drive, and use it in another enclosure with an up-to-date interface. That is only a suggestion...it would require a certain amount of mechanical expertise and a good phillips screwdriver ;-)

this happens to my external drives if they are not getting enough power thru the usb sockets.
Usually the rear sockets on the backplate(desktop pc) have more power.
You can also use a y cable that has 2 sockets on one end to get power from 2 usb sockets

Connect it to a different computer, to see if the device is working at all.

If not, and if the Mad Dog is still under warranty, then exercise the warranty to get it repaired/replaced.

Otherwise, disassemble the casing, remove the disk-drive,
and connect the disk-drive as a "slave" disk-drive in a desktop computer, to see if the disk-drive is OK. This would imply that the USB-to-disk-drive interface inside the casing is the problem.

please check if it is a new external drive.
If it is new external drive, please format.
Note: all of the data would be lost on it.
How to format a newly brough hard drive:
http://www.xpmaximized.com/archives/xp-usb-hard-drive-format-.html

It would cost just as much to purchase a "SERILLEL" adapter as it would cost to purchase another "empty" external hard-drive case that has support for the newer-style 'SATA' hard-drive.

If you have a newer desktop-computer, you probably have an unused SATA port on your motherboard, and an unused SATA power-connector. Temporarily connect the SATA drive to your motherboard, and do the recovery.

Make sure the default drive letter is not already taken.

the drive is defective. replace it

The grand majority of these external hard drives can't withstand being dropped from 3 inches, and some can't be dropped 1/2 inch. In other words, to retrieve your data, you will have to send it to a specialist, who will charge you between $300 to $1500 to get the data, with no guarantees. What a deal. I had a Fantom 120 gb, my dog knocked it over, and by by data. The fact that it is making noises means it has been knocked out of kilter. Try calling them with your warranty, but I bet it won't cover it. The whole industry is a big ripoff, as they do not warn you that you can lose everything at the drop of a hat (as it were). Only one company guarantees a drop of 7 feet that I know of. Better off to back up your data using an online secure system. Some cost only $4.95/month. Sorry.

The firmware updates and drivers won't help you. You can try turning it off, disconnecting it from your PC, then turning off your PC, turning on the burner and then turning your PC back on and hope that it's recognized. The chances are slim as this is a known issue with Mad Dog external USB DVDRW's and you need to send it in for repair if it's under warranty or put it on eBay as broken (or throw it out) otherwise and get a new one. I have a Mad Dog external DVD-RW and ran into the same exact issue, for a while it was working on and off as long as I didn't turn the burner off while my PC was on but for a while now it's just recognized by the PC as mass storage device rather than the DVDRW that it is and when you reach that point the aforementioned two choices (repair or throwing it out\putting it on ebay) are the only ones you have.