I plug in my hard drive and it tells me that i need to format it before use. how do i get my data off of the hard drive?

Probably, the new operating system cannot recognize your Seagate external hard drive. You can connect the Seagate external hard drive to another computer to copy data to another device. If the problem still exists, you might need to perform data recovery. You can free download the data recovery software: http://www.icare-recovery.com/seagate-recovery/seagate-external-cannot-be-recognized.html

Don't be panic. you can try some format recovery software. You can see
http://www.asoftech.com/adr/
It tells the steps how to perform data recovery.

If above does not work, you may have to format the hard drive (use quick format), and then use above mentioned software to scan again the hard drive and recover your files.

Don't be panic. you can try some data recovery software. You can see
http://www.asoftech.com/adr/
It tells the steps how to perform data recovery.

If above does not work, you may have to format the hard drive (use quick format), and then use above mentioned software to scan again the hard drive and recover your files.

Best solution would be to try it on another computer & if it works there use the windows check disk tool (& maybe the defragmenter) to correct this problem. OR you could transfer the data onto another hard disk, format this one keeping 2-4 partitions and reload your data.

download recover my file or ontrack recovery. Recover your files from the hard disk and then format your hard drive if you need crack or serial for the software mail me at [email protected] with the subject recovery crack

What did you format to,fat,fat32,NTFS,

I am not sure if your saying you had it on a desktop pc and now you plugged it into a laptop, or its always been on the same computer
and it just wants to format.

Either way, a computer should not want to format, usually you have to tell it to format, and the only reason to format a hard drive whether internal
or external ,is to change the file system from one to another,

example; FAT to NTFS , or your going to install a operating system to the hard drive.

Its sounds like you had it in a computer whether the same one or a different one, and you did not use the safely remove hardware, or you unplugged it while it was writing data back and forth.

Turn both off, the computer and external hard drive, plug the hard drive
into a different USB port, or firewire, how ever it connects.

Now turn on the external hard drive, wait a few minutes, now start the computer, once in windows if you see this I want to format you hard drive, tell it no, go to control panel and open devise MGR, and look for a yellow shield, under Universal serial bus controllers , the one that has a yellow mark, right click on it and choose properties, read what it says
in the open box, if it says disabled, enable it, if it says no driver,
click on driver tab, and click update driver.

You maybe able to retrieve data from this hard drive by connecting it to an USB hard drive adapter. Then plug this adapter into a working computer's USB port. If the hard drive is OK then this computer will see the adapter as an external hard drive and you can open the folders and files and copy them to the computer's hard drive or to a USB flash drive.

try unplug all other usb devices, reboot and plug only the hard drive and see what happen

you can try some data recovery software. You can see
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Asoftech-Data-Recovery/290956907592436?sk=info
It tells the steps how to perform data recovery.

If above does not work, you may have to format the hard drive (use quick format), and then use above mentioned software to scan again the hard drive and recover your files.