my WD harddrive is 3 years old. its an internet HD for PC and contains all my movies/music/etc. recently some sort of error occured and when i try to access the drive in windows XP, a message pops up: “the drive is not formatted, do you like to do that now?”. if i click no, then nothing happens. i really want to know if my stored files are still intact and how would i be able to recover the data? any help is graciously appreciated! thanks! 
hi,
please don’t format it. as you will lose data after format. and i can handle this case.
If this is an external drive then the partition may have been damaged and you may be able to repair the partition or use a data recovery software to recover your data.
Always be sure to do a Safely Remove Hardware before removing a drive while the computer is running.
If it is an internal drive then the drive may have failed. In either case, you should test the drive using Western Digital’s Data Lifeguard Diagnostics utility to see where you stand.
It is extremely important to always backup your data to protect you against things like this.
