Been working great for over 1 year. Today I put a few files on it, then left the house. Came back and drive is dead. It now says It must be formatted to use. I have over 300 gigs on it and over 1 year old.
 
Tried these things to get data
 
1. tried on different usb ports (says need to format in order to use)
2. Tried on 3 other computers (says need to format " ")
3. Tried on 32 and 64 bit, windows 7 and xp (need to format)
4. Disk management shows that the drive is in Raw and needs to format
5. Drive is not clicking or getting hot like a bad drive. No Identification that the drive is bad.
6. There is no drive letter on the drive So i poplutaed the drive and still shows it as raw
7. Went to cmd and typed in scan disk command and says can not read since it is in raw
8. Tried the western digital lifeguard software and it reads the drive but says there is no file system on it. Doing extended test on it now.
 
 
Is there anyway for me to get the files from this? The files are there so i do not want to format the drive. I just can not figure out how it can revert to raw form on its own in a few hours while i was gone.