Iomega 1TB External HDD - Clicking, Not Found, Dead?

Good Afternoon,

I was curious if anyone has experience with these drives. I bought it just over a year ago, didnt catch it only carries a one year warranty versus the norm of 3/5 years. Everything has worked well expect last night while transferring data over the network it stops and gives me an error to the effect of 'You must format this drive before using it'. I clicked cancel and skip but the same problem arose. I removed the UBS connection, plugged back in, it recognized the drive and the same problem again. I then tried a different computer which it didnt find the drive at all. This time when I powered on, I could hear a faint repeticious clicking almost like when a record ends. I went back to the original computer where it quickly brought up Windows Explorer of the drive but the entire folder (which is around 40Gb of pictures) shows empty. I get the knot in the stomach feeling. Powered down, waiting around 15 minutes, plugged back in and the drive is not showing.

Now, there isnt a need to format being the same drive has been functional for a year. Being this unit is no longer under warranty and being it's 2 500Gb drives stacked using JBOD, I'm thinking to try to install each directly into the PC and see if they are recongnized.

That's my fear but I staying optimistic. I pulled the drives out of the external case, connected them both to the MB to SATA2 and SATA3 (DVD Drive is in SATA1). I now a have a new drive in My Computer which shows as empty and no properties available. I'm wondering if I have to undo the JBOD settings that were set when the manufacturer created the drive so they show as two disks instead of one... just not quite sure how to do it.

I did. I had to buy a different dual-drive external case. The kind I got was made by Eagle. It supports two SATA drives and auto-configures JBOD. Worked perfectly.