Has My External Drive Been Wiped Out?

So I have a Western Digital external hard drive that I bought in anticipation of the Leopard release in October, 2007. And it's generally worked well, until now. After being away for a few days, I turned on my iMac and the external didn't pop up. So I unplugged it and plugged it in again and after doing this, nothing came up.

Finally, a message comes up, hours later saying that the disk couldn't be initialized and the like and Disk Utility pops up. And on Disk Utility, my external is popped up... yet it shows it has the full amount of space available and that it isn't formatted.

Keep in mind that I'm a musician, I record, produce and actually put all of those files on the external to prevent myself hassle and heartache from the iMac's drive going out.

But now that this has happened... has my external wiped out? You have no idea how much I am praying to hear the words: "No."

Thanks!

Use Disk Utility to verify the external WD hard drive. If a bunch of errors come up, it might be time to try to get your data off that drive on to a new drive. You might also consider purchasing "Data Rescue II". Link

Something else you might consider if you have a PC handy that you can use. Go to the Western Digital web site and download their free hard drive analysis program and use it to check the drive. It does need to work from Windows or from a bootable floppy drive.

Regards.