Mysterious HD Problem

[cjlutz]

I currently have a 120GB XIMETA USB External Hard Disk, on which I store important files that I don't want to lose on my computer's default hard disk. Yesterday, I go to access my external hard disk, and suddenly I'm asked if I want to format the disk, which I know I don't. I have tried just about everything. Please help?!

[gussery]

Have you tried accessing this drive from another computer?  

At this point I must get on my soapbox....
[soapbox on]
External drives (USB, Floppy, etc.) are significantly less reliable than internal drives.  I can't count how many times I have had to try to rescue someone's data from an external disk, drive, etc.  In my opinion external drives should be used as backup devices not primary storage devices.  If it is used as a primary storage device then it needs to be backed up just like internal drives do.
[/soapbox off]

Sorry for the mini rant, but it really surprises me how many times I have seen a situation similar to this......

[cjlutz]

That's ok if you want to rant, I can understand. I'll be sure to take your advice into account. However, what can I do about this problem now? I don't have a good computer that I could try to connect it to right now, and a friend of mine suggested recovering the data with a Linux Live disk, which I know nothing about.

[gussery]

If it were me, I would find another computer to test it out on before I did anything directly to the drive or files.

I would want to know if it was a problem with the drive or my computer first.......

What OS were you using to write files to this drive?  What was the format of the drive (NTFS, FAT, FAT32, etc.)?

[Dural]

Have you tried taking the drive out of the external case and hooking it up as a slave inside the case?