Question : Problem: How to manually attach a drive?

I'm not sure if this can be done.   Essentially most external devices fall into one of the following categories, and I'm looking for something else:
- plug & play picks up the device & auto-mounts for you
- you install device drivers from a CD, etc. & device mounts

Is there any way to force a drive to mount?  I'd like to do this since my external harddrive used to work & a few days ago it stopped working.  

My guess is: since it's connected via USB there must be a way to manually set up the device on that port?

I've always wondered if this can be done in that way - any ideas?

Answer : Problem: How to manually attach a drive?

You can't "force" a drive in the way I'm interpreting what you want.

But if this is an external USB Hard drive, why not just remove it from the enclosure and add it directly to the system as an internal drive (add it with the system powered off).  That will rule out problems with USB and auto-detection, essentially.