External hard drive issue.

[O]

I have an external hard drive, Iomega ION, that was partitioned into three volumes, G, H and I.
I plug it in and the G drive tells me that in needs to be formatted. Of course the files I need are on the G drive.
Is there a way to get the files off the G drive without formatting because I don't want to lose those files.
I need to try and fix this without spending any money on a program, it sucks to be poor.
I am running Vista on my computer though I have access to an XP computer also.
Any ideas, or am I screwed?

 

[Chaz]

Have you tried answering no don't format and accessing the files anyway?

Is the drive blank in windows explorer?

 

[O]

Have you tried answering no don't format and accessing the files anyway?

Is the drive blank in windows explorer?

It won't give me the option to say no. It's either format or cancel.

It appears as local Disk F, it used to be ION (G
It won't allow me to explore, the format window pops up.

 

[Chaz]

You can try running a check disk.

You might also try and see what it does with XP.

 

[Dr. Jones]

Maybe I'm an idiot... but..... How do you get the "this much space is free" bar under the drive names?

Is it a vista thing?

I could really use that. I have Windows 07 black.