External HD suddenly "unreadable" - PLEASE HELP!

Im in total panic mode right now, so I'll try and provide all the information exactly as I remember it.
Last night, I wanted to move some things off my 350GB Maxtor (model escapes me at the moment, I'm at work...) to a DVD. The External HD is connected by USB to my iMac G5. iTunes gets all its files off this External. I selected a large video folder, and told it to archive. It didn't appear to be doing anything, so I cancelled and tried again. I put a blank DVD in, and got a 'this disc is unreadable' message. I figured my DVD drive was going (sometimes Ive had problems with the laser error messages), so I tried to eject the disc, and it wouldn't. I stopped trying to archive the video and re-started the computer. The disc went in fine, and I attempted to start archiving the large video folder again. I kept getting an error message saying that it was unable to archive, so I finally gave up and went to bed.
I woke up, and plugged my iPhone in to sync it before I got in the shower. When I got back, my screensaver had froze on an image, and I had to manually turn the computer off and back on. When I turned it on, the External HD never showed up on the desktop. I unplugged the power on the External HD and plugged it back in. I was met with a "This disc is not readable." and the options to Ignore, Cancel or Initialize.
I restarted numerous times, attempted plugging it into all USB ports, same message everywhere. When I hit Initialize, the disc manager showed it recognized the External drive formatted for the Mac - but the title I called the drive wasn't showing up.
If there is ANYTHING anyone can think of that may help me, I would be the most thankful person alive. This drive has YEARS worth of music, movies and personal videos on it. I really am having a hard time believing that all this stuff is GONE from the drive, but I'm at a total loss right now, and any suggestions would just be amazing. Thank you.

Try unplugging and then replugging the drive, and then reset the PRAM. Let us know if this helps,

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The drive appears in the sidebar with a tiny lock icon, and when I try to copy a file from my internal HD to the external (top level directory, or drag the items right onto the icon), the following things happen:
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(12377)

External HD suddenly "unreadable" - PLEASE HELP!

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