HELP!!! Corrupt Hard Drive issue?

No! Formatting will only make things worse. One program i've had great success with in the past is call TeskDisk. You can find it here http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

This program is a bit advanced, as it is mostly done from the command line though it does have a GUI of sorts. The program recovers the partition table, which should be enough to get into it as long as there isn't too much damage.

No once a drive goes bad its unrecoverable to get the files back and formatting the hard drive isnt going to do anything but just try to delete it the hard drive must of fallen or got hit by accident or maybe it was exposed to the heat or moved to much or maybe it was its time you can call the manufacturer to see what programs they have in there website to help you try to recover your files good luck!

Formatting it will erase everything on it. so god job at not doing that lol. you probably didnt eject it correctly. do you just pull it out of your computer? you should always right click and hit eject or cancel ( i have a mac so idk what the buttons are) and im sure you cold find a torrent of the program if you dont want to buy it.

Try Recuva. 100% free.

http://www.recuva.com/