does this apply to you? have you unplugged it before safley removing it?
"you can't unplug a USB hard drive without "Safely Removing Hardware". To do this you must right click on the green arrow that appears on the task bar and click safely remove hardware and then hit stop. Hit stop again if it asks you to. then after it says it is safe remove it. Other wise you will damage the hard drive. this does not always happen but I have heard horrer stories and had bad experiences myself. The best thing to do would be to tell Western Digital you can't get the information you need badly off there disk and see if they can recover it. If not you probably should return it and get a maxtor."