Drive has been working fine for over a year, with no drops, bumps, or jostles. I do not leave it plugged in or connected to my computer for long periods. Upon reconnecting the drive to my PC, the light came on, and the drive spins up but did not show in explorer, so of course, I opened Control Panel and Disk Management, and it is asking me to Initialize the disk. I've been using this drive for over a year with no problems. WD said, "This looks like you have disconnected the drive from the computer improperly." This did not happen. It is still under warranty, and they emailed me a list of over a dozen places where I can pay (WD affiliates ) to recover the data out of my pocket. Then I can send WD the drive, then they will replace it. The drive is a little over 50% full. I don't have the money to pay a WD affiliate business to do this. I have not taken the step of initializing(re-initializing) because I believe that would corrupt all of the data on the drive. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I would like to reclaim most or even some of the data if possible; if it cannot be done or reconstructed with software or techniques that I am unaware of, I will just re-initialize it myself and send it straight to WD. The most important items on it that I want to recover are a few System Images that I have not had the chance to make a secondary backup on. I know 2 is 1 and 1 is none, and have gone as far as I can by RTFM Thank you!