External drive fails to read data

Hi
My Seagate Expansion portable drive has 300Gb of data and been working perfectly. Now however I get a message to format the drive before using it or alternatively that it is not accessible - The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable. This is the same with USB2 or 3.
This seems to have happened after I got a flash message on plugging in that the device has not been recognized (or some such - its a brief message.)
The drive is recognized in Computer management and "device is working properly". The Quick removal policy is flagged and the driver is up to date.
I get the same problem on my PC and netbook , both win 7. 64 and 32 bit respectively.

How to work round the block?

Hi again
I have installed new updates which included KB3133977, my last update 25th March had included KB3139398.

There is no change and I am still requested to format the drive which would erase the data.

I also run an internal drive which I only switch on as needed and this has not been affected so I assume that its the USB2 & 3 that are the problem.

I was able to read the first error message briefly just now - "The device driver is incorrectly installed". This seems to conflict with the Device management as I mentioned in my first post.

Solution?

Hi
working on it

Hi yet again

Got there at last via seagate to checkdisk - latter allowed access - what a run around for a wrinklie!

Many thanks - much appreciated