computer is detecting existing hard drive as new volume and prompting to format it

Hi everyone....

i have a problem with my usb hard disk.....i have an 500 gb seagate usb hard disk...it was working fine till yesterday.....i had plugged it to my laptop and the laptop hibernated.....on starting the windows next time i was able to see the hard disk in my computer but when i tried to open any folder in it was showing that the folder is empty....so i disconnected the drive withous safely removing it...after that when i plugged it the device again the computer is detecting it as a new volume and prompting me to format it....i checked in disk management and its showing the file system as RAW......i have important data on it so i cant format it.....please help me out.....

You can try to get the Partition structure back, then re-establish the File System, then recover all the files. One software package that does at least part of this is called Getdataback NTFS. They have a useful free trial offer. You can download and run the software on your disk, and it will do a bunch of work and show exactly what your disk will look like.