why won't my laptop read the files from an external hardrive?

[Krash55918]

The laptop computer I have has a reader that doesn't read CDG discs. So, I used another computer with a CDG reader and the hoster program to download all of my music into an external hard drive. Now, when I attach the external hard drive to the laptop, for some reason it doesn't recognize the music. It does recognize the drive, just not the music. Was I wrong in thinking that once the music is in the external hard drive that it wouldn't matter what kind of cd reader the laptop had? Do I need a reader for CDG even if the music is already on an external hard drive?