External not being recognized. help with backing up files, PLEASE!

http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/2116/screenshot20110211at848.png
my external does not get recognized by my laptop unless i use disk utility and click repair. after about 10 minutes of it 'repairing,' it says i have to delete everything off of it and reformat it. it has 40 GB of information and i only have 3 GB left on my computer. talk about yikes.
is there a way i can fix this without having to delete everything?

angsavestheday wrote:
to back up data. my external was formatted so i could use it on both windows and mac.
You cannot back up to a FAT-formatted volume with Time Machine.
You might be able to partition the drive, so one partition is +Mac OS Extended (Journaled),+ and the other is MS-DOS (FAT) or ExFAT, which both Macs and PCs can read and write, but that's not a particularly good idea, either.
And since you mention only having 3 GB left on your internal HD, you must make some room, immediately. Your Mac will slow down more and more as that gets smaller, and data may be corrupted/lost, apps may crash, etc. You should have at least 15% free space on your internal HD at all times!
Your best bet is probably a larger internal HD, so there's room for all your originals, and an external HD for backups (only).
Or two external HDs; one for the "overflow" of things that won't fit on your internal (most or all formatted for a Mac, so Time Machine can back it up along with your internal HD), the other for backups.
You might want to review the [Time Machine Tutorial|http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#timemachinebasics] and perhaps browse [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

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