external HD!!!!!!!?????

ahhhh my external HD has gone WACK!!! ok i think i might of turned off my mac without shutting it down and then when i turned it back on the first thing that came up was, this disk is not recognised - eject - ignore - initialize. that HD had EVERYTHING on it... how the **** do i get it back????

Oh man (woman?), I wish I had an answer for this one but unfortunately I don't. Perhaps you can find something in the Disk Utility that can help you.

Anyhow, I had a similar experience with a CF card that I had plugged into a card reader that was plugged into my Mini. The first time I plugged the CF card into the reader, I copied files from the card onto my Mini then removed the card without first "ejecting" it. BIG MISTAKE, because a message appeared that told me something to the effect that I'd lost all the card info. Fortunately the data was already on my Mini.

The moral of the story: ALWAYS press the eject button before removing or shutting down an external drive! I wish Macs weren't so bloody picky about this - they're not forgiving AT ALL should you forget to do this if your mind's on something else, for example - and I hope tris68 that someone far wiser than I can help you get your HD files back.

Two things, the far more important "moral" is always, always, always, always, always keep backups of important files. The best solution I've found is to keep them on gDisk (free utility that allows you to use a Gmail account as storage) or iDisk, or both. But I digress. The real issue is getting your HD to work again. You did TRY the "initialize" option, right? Try and follow that through and see where it takes you. If it gets you nowhere, the manufacturer should have a troubleshooting guide for just this sort of issue. I mean, everyone makes mistakes like that sometimes. If just ONE screws up the hard drive completely, the product just isn't durable. They should be able to help you with that. If they won't/can't and the data is that important, a hard disk recovery place should be able to recover your important files.