External Hard Drive problems

[thedudething]

Hi, I have been using an external ide hard drive to back up my files. Sometimes it crashes and im left with just the lost+found folder and the rest of the files come back later. However now my files aren't coming back.
Help?

[Submatrix]

When you say crashed, what do you mean? Is it making unusual noises? Also, what is the filesystem of the drive?

Plug it in and run dmesg afterwards and paste the output here.