External hd problem

Not a massive problem but i got a new laptop a week back and i was playing around on it the first day and i put my hard drive in noticing that the ports are quite tight so i started to pull the usb cable in and out thinking it would loosen a little bit. When i put it back in i tryed to access all my files and they wernt accessible so i formatted it stupidly back then lost a years worth of work and files. Anyways a few days back the same thing happened but then i could access my files when i replugged it in. Also the same thing just happened now and then i can access again i may have to send my laptop off on warrenty soon hopefully not its looking that way anyways but if i loose my everything on my removable hd im pretty screwed. Does this ever happen from ejecting to much with out letting the hard drive start up or something cause i never had this problem with my old computer and this hard drive but with this computer seems to be happening every now and then lost all data once dont really want to again.