Scouts88

I am praying to the computer gods that someone on here has a solution to my problem. I use Windows Vista Home Premium edition.
I was running out of space on my Dell XPS 1710 Laptop and transferred all my photos and videos to an external hard drive. I plugged the hard drive back into my laptop and now I can't view any of my photos or videos. They are still there, taking up many, many GB's. And on a few of the pictures, I can see them on the thumbnail. However, when I go to open them a message pops up on Windows Photo Gallery saying, "Photo Gallery can't open this photo or video because it might have been deleted or is in a location that is not available."

I know I messed up bigtime by not backing them up. Is there any way to save my files or am I out of luck. Any follow up questions you got, send them my way. Appreciate the help. Thanks.