[Darthtanion]

You have stumbled across the number one reason that I do not use Nortan Systemworks. Not only can it cause problems, it is also a terrible resource hog.

Now that I've stepped off my soapbox, lets look at a couple of things. First off, any sort of defragging utility (even the one that comes with Windows) will hack up a hairball if you have any background disk activity going on. If you have the Systemworks suite installed, it likely is running stuff in the background, even on your external drive. Since it is in the process of moving data from one place to another, it is possible that it scapeed the partition table when the thing crashed. Since NTFS does not utilize a "system area", it is also possible that it was working with the allocation elements of the drive when it cratered. This would cause the power-off you did to lose the file system. I won't say this IS what happened, only that it is a possibility.

Do a Google search and look for some sort of file recovery program, or check out some of the other threads that talk about this topic here in the forums. Don't reformat the drive until you try to use a recovery tool to get your data back.

Good luck.