when i turn on the hard drive, after about a minute i get the 'you must format to continue' blah blah blah message. what i'm wondering is if anyone can recommend a good data recovery program. i've tried a couple, only one actualy recognized the drive and that there are files on there but didn't do too good of a job.

What is the status of the external drive when looking in Disk Management? You can try a live version of Linux, like Knoppix, which should be able to recover the files. Or you can try recovery programs which either show you what can be recovered after purchasing or allow limited recovery. Look below. Knoppix Downloads http://www.kernel.org/pub/dist/knop... Get the file about 2/3 of the way down. Knoppix V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso 94-Jan-2007 00:58 696M PC Inspector (freeware) http://www.snapfiles.com/get/pcinsp... Zero assumption Recovery http://www.z-a-recovery.com The demo is limited It will only recover 'up to' four folders per run But you can make multiple runs IMO the best, but not free GetDataBack http://www.runtime.org/ After file recovery you could try to repair the partition with Testdisk. Get it below. Be sure to read the tutorials thoroughly. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Test...