I have my backup on an external 1Tb drive (Hitachi). I usually have the PSU switched off except when I need it. However, Sod's Law got me. I think it may have been "got at" when I was trying to write a live USB.
Can anyone help with instructions how to get back as much as possible? When I try to access it now, I get the error message below:
An error occurred while accessing 'HITACHI', the system responded: org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.UnknownFailure: NTFS signature is missing. Failed to mount '/dev/sdb1': Invalid argument The device '/dev/sdb1' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS. Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?

j
(This seemed to be the most likely area to put this, please move it if I'm wrong!)
Further info: Since I switched off, and back on, I can no longer "see" it at all. Oooppss....