New external HDD problems all of a sudden

[Heresy420]

recently i purchased an external hard drive for my laptop and it was recognized as a plug and play hard drive so i put about 20gb's of music and other very important files on it. i  was using it for about a week when suddenly it asked me to format it, so now i cant access the drive. i nearly *censored* myself. some of the files are irreplaceble and i was wondering if there was a way for me to get those files off before i format it. any help would be GREATLY appreciated.
- Thanks

[GX1_Man]

And if you click on that drive in My Computer, right click and choose properties what does it show?

Was it previously formatted as NTFS?

You may want to read these threads:

http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1162467047/8#8

http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1152393515

Please remember that ALL hard drives fail eventually taking that data with them. That is not the place to store important things.  

Are you watching, Patio?

[patio]

I can't wait...the suspense is killin me.

[GX1_Man]

You know what the answer is, but it's still suspenseful, isn't it?