Zero KB Alias Files Weird Names like ;>;>.;>

HELP!

I have a external hard drive that holds all of my iTunes content. All of a sudden all the files on it have gone to Zero Kb file size and listed as alias with weird names like ;>␀;>␀.;> and a>␀a>␀.A>I kid you not.

When i do a get info on the hard drive the Create date is set to Monday 31 December 1979.

Help are all of my itunes files... close to 400gb worth of content gone?

Macbook Mac OS X (10.5.6)

 

The Repair Disc Permissions is greyed out... This is a drive that is formatted with fat32... Was a drive that i use to share between Mac and PC. But exclusively Mac now.

Yesterday my mac was running really slow, I ran verify disc permissions on the start up disc and it seemed to fix the issue, but I did nothing to the external HD

I've downloaded the demo of Data Rescue II to see if it can salvage any data from the drive... am i jumping ahead to quickly?