Help: My ext HDD can't read my files and asked to be reformated!

Help help

I have a Prezmate HDD 160GB (an old one)
In the afternoon it was working fine. Then at nite I plug into another HP laptopcomputer.
At first it gave the option of opening the files - which I did, and I saw the files. Then when I tried to open the folders - it kinda got hang... nothing moves....

I tried to get the task manager up and tried to closed it but could not - then i forced shut down the computer. After that I plug the hdd into another laptop, it asked if I want to reformat it! the HDD cannot be read at all....

Please please help me...

thanks

In the best case, a utility such as EASEUS Partition Recovery can deal with the lost formatting information and recover your files. That's the best case. The worst case goes up to a hardware issue, which can cost over a thousand dollars to recover, or not be recoverable.

If one of the various search-and-recover utilites does not find your data, the next logical step is to crack open the case and install the drive directly into a desktop / tower system, in case the problem is with the case electronics.

Do not format or otherwise write to the drive; this will just make the damage worse. And can you stop those fershliggener smilies from bouncing? It distracts my little pea brain.

Good luck.