Trying to restore

My laptop recently died, (blown motherboard), but I had a backup on an external drive. That laptop was running on Windows Vista, and my new laptop runs Windows 8. The version on the old laptop is unknown & support could not identify my account even though I've had the app since February 2012.

As I now try to restore my old files to the new laptop, I'm having several issues. I first had to download a trial version so that I would have Acronis on the new machine. I've done that & was hoping to use it to restore my files. The issues are:

1. The new laptop does not recognize properly identify the drive. It shows as G:(f:). I believe this is because I use to use the Maxtor external drive on the old machine, as well as a flash drive. When I did backups the old laptop would identify the flash drive as F:, and the external drive as G: Why it is now identifying the external drive as G:(F:) I do not know.

2. The new Acronis software does not show the files on the external drive. However if I go to the Device Manager>Drives>Maxtor, and then go to Properties I see the drive, I see that it has 173GB on it. So I see the drive is operable, I can also feel that it is warm and has a slight vibration as though the platter(s) is running.

3. I have many important documents on it, as well as many customized folders in Outlook that hold very important emails, contacts, & my calendar. I also have many many websites in Favorites folder, & an application called ROBOFORM that stores all the passwords for all of these sites.

I don't know what to do & I'm in a near panic as my business is down until I resolve this issue. My question is what do I do next? Please help.