hey guys now apparently everytime i plug my external hard drive onto my laptop ( and any other pc ) windows just wants to format it, it happened all of a sudden , i have alot of important stuff on that external hard drive and would be cool if windows would let me access it :( thanks alot in advance !
Basically I second what Xaltar said. The controller in your enclosure may have just died, which is the most likely problem. Verify the hard drive is still good, then you can buy a replacement enclosure.
Becareful about putting it in a computer because if it has been labeled dirty windows will automatically start cleaning the dirty sectors and possibly delete half of the drive in doing so which will result in no possiblity for you to get those data sectors/files back. If it comes down to it and the drive is no longer…