Help with non working external drive

I have an problematic Iomega 298GB USB connection/powered external drive - model LPHD-UP P/N 31769900
The referenced external drive has a Win 7 backup made with the Win 7 backup application. When I tried to open the drive I first get a pop-up telling me that I must format the drive before I can use it? When I go to properties for the drive it shows 0 used and 0 unused space. In desperation I tried to run format but got a message telling me that windows is unable to complete the format. I also get a messaged that the location (I:\ is not accessible - data error (cyclic redundancy check)
When I go to Control panel, Computer Management - Disk management it shows the Iomega I: drive 298.09 GB and reports it as a Healthy Primary Partition, confusing me even more?

Is this drive now a paper weight or is there any hope for restoring/accessing the drive contents?

Any suggestions or comments would be appreciated.

Frank

thanks whs - you confirmed my fears

Just to reiterate: The error data error (cyclic redundancy check) -- This message indicates that the
operating system has found a drive with bad sectors or some other intermittent problem.
This is usually caused by hard drive hardware problems.
Also if you started a format it immediately wiped the MBR. There are special tools to recover data
even if drive is formatted or wiped clean. Luckily external usb hard drives are cheaper and cheaper
to buy.

Thanks Baddog for the additional input on the error message. Luckily nothing on the drive is of major consequence.

Frank