Help!!! My 250 Gig External Harddrive crashed????

Recently I let my friend borrow my external harddrive to trade some files and when i got it back My computer said that the drive needed to be formated i know that erases all my files i have over 900 pictures that arent saved anywhere else please let me know if there is anything i can do to open the drive again

Thanks in advance
J_west8504@yahoo.com