Hello!!! I don't know much about computers (never owned one) so
sorry if I seem stupid. My girlfriend has a 250 Gb Maxtor one-
touch external hard-drive connected via USB 2.0. Recently however,
the computer doesn't "recognize" the drive. It can see it and it says
that it works properly, however you can't use it because windows XP
complains about I/O-trouble. According to the administration tools, it
seems like the Maxtor isn't even formatted (RAW instead of FAT32 which
it was before). However, there are more than 50 GB's worth of files on
the
drive and those files are not damaged or anything (used the Handy
recovery
to find out about that). Do I have to first format the disc and then
recover the files (seems unnecessary and dangerous) or is there
another way to "pull" them out of there. I've checked download.com but
I don't really find what I'm looking for.
Any help would be highly appreciated.

BTW, I've checked with the fire-wire connection, at my friends
computer,
re-installing USB etc...