Windows 7 - External HDD Failed?

I've been having some issues with 7 lately. My external HDD, that I hardly ever use (only for backup) is not working. It has (had?) over 100gb of important shit on it, and its just.. not working. Every time I plug it in, it spins up.. and windows says "You need to format the disk in F: before you can use it." It didn't say this before.. ever.. Is this Windows 7 being stupid, or did my external drive fail? It seems to spin up just fine.. no click of death or anything.

Edit: I tried seatools.. it passed the S.M.A.R.T. test, and it passed the DST Short Test.

Try the drive in another machine, that may tell us something.

Is it a true external hard drive, or is it an internal drive in a USB enclosure?

It's a "True External Hard Drive". I'll go test it in another machine right now.

Edit: Just tested it on a netbook which has windows 7 professional x86 installed. Same thing... this is the drive, huh...

ehh?

It sounds like the drive is bad, but see if you can pull anything off of it using DiskDigger.

My guess would be that your MFT is corrupted. Try to pull your data off with Recuva and then reformat it. You can also try one of the Linux distros. They are not as touchy as windows.

I am curious, what is the difference?

The enclosure could have gone bad and the drive could be fine.

There's not enough room on my HDD to store any files that recuva may or may not recover.

Edit: Tried ubuntu, and it just says uh.. well I forgot, but something along the lines of "opening drive, click to cancel" and it hangs.

The Great Carnack sees a new external drive in your future. (He assumes this is a laptop.) With a new and improved interface and much storage space on which to attempt to recover the sacred files.

This is a true external hard drive.


Here's an internal hard drive in an enclosure.