External hard drive problem

[Bug-Eyed Earl]

I can't access one of my external hard drives all of a sudden and it says I need to format it before I use it. But my computer also says I have to erase the hard drive before I can format it. Is there any way to save my data on it?

[Jaepheth]

Try TestDisk

Though, be very careful whenever messing with a disk you want to recover data from.