Help With External Hard Drive Please

Hi,
I have an external hard drive, all my music, movies, and time machine backups are on it, I've had it for over a year, never had an issue, all of a sudden, my Mac won't recognize it I get this message when I connect it:

! Disk Insertion
The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer

My options are: Initialize Ignore and Eject

I don't want to lose my files, there's got to be some way to get stuff off of it right? I'm not sure what to do, I figure if I try to reformat or anything it'll wipe it out. I'd really rathar not try to replace all my files.

You may need a program like Data rescue

you can download a demo to see if it can help first

Mac Data Rescue, Mac Disk Recovery, Macintosh File Recovery - Prosofteng.com

Have you tried rebooting your Mac? I had this happen once, rebooted and the disk was fine. Worth a try.

You do have a few options before you del air the drive dead. Based on experience the drive could be dead, could be corrupt or could just be flakey. Try the following:

1 Open Disc Utility and locate the drive.

2 See if the partition (i.e. the named drive) appears beneath the disc.

3 If so, click on the partition (it may be greyed out) and hit the "MOUNT" button in the disc utility window. If drive mounts, retrieve your data and the reformat. If not:

4 Click either the drive or the partition and then click "REPAIR DISC" in the lower right corner of the disc utility window.

5 If the disc is repaired successfully it should either mount or you can try to manually mount it.

6 If you still can't mount the disc or if disc utility fails you will want to look at one of the above mentioned data recovery tools (I use Data Rescue III myself).

Formatting the drive after retrieving your data may fix it, or it may just be the first round in a battle with a failing drive.

Good luck!