Ext Drive not formatted ?

I had to repair windows xp home. I had lots of problems with repair it and getting sp2 back on. After getting help from krit86lr the problem I now have is accessing my exteral drives. I have 2 western digital drives. When I try to open them I get the error "The disk is not formatted, would you like to format them now?". I know both of them had worked prior the the windows xp problem and both of them have tons of pictures and files I would prefer not to lose. I know about backing up. I didn't expect that each one, which has a backup of the other would stop working at the same time. What is causing this problem and how do I recover the data without a format. Thank you again in advance.

Link from past problem
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=96513&highlight=scottvstn

 

try recovery expert from acronis, i think it can help in restoring lost and broken partitions.

 

recovery expert didnt work. also tried getdata back NTFS. that didnt work work to get back files either. should i format and try to recover that way?

 

did you run check disk or something like this?

 

it runs on main drive h: just fine. how do i run it on the external m? i have tried:

chkdsk m
chkdsk m:

neither one does anything at all

 

It sounds as if your Partition info is corrupted.
there are some free tools for recovering files, try this one:
PC INSPECTOR
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm
File Recovery is a data recovery program that supports the FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS file systems. The current version 3.x replaces the previous version 2.x, which is now over 6 years old.

otherwise i don't know what to suggest you, unfortunately

 

thank you to all that added help. i had to format both of the drives. if this might happen to anyone else use http://www.recovermyfiles.com

it is very time consuming but did get all of my pictures and data back. it is the ONLY program that was able to get them back.