Windows 7: Corrupt files on external hard drive

Ok, So, today I left my computer on while i went out for a little while as it was making an archive of a file (located on my internal hard drive). I came home to find the computer locked up on the screen saver, tried a "Ctrl-Alt-Del", and nothing happened. I waited a little bit to see if it would load, because he screen was off and came on when I moved my mouse. Still nothing. So I did a hard shut-off, then rebooted. Soon after, I came to find that my external hard-drive was screwed up. I can't rename anything, open any folders, or anything. I have very important stuff on here, can anybody help me? is there a way that like OS X or Linux could still read it? (It happened to me once before, but it only said the drive needed to be formatted, nothing like this.)

Try Test Disk

Ok, I just tried the "Scan and Fix" thing that pops up when you plug in a removable drive. After about an hour, it gave me a whole page with a ton of errors on it. Went back to the drive, and it is renamed and everything is gone. Except the Windows 7 Beta '.ISO' that I had on it. How stupid, unlucky, and sort of ironic is that?

could you use a data recovery software ie easus , recuva

just a thought can you go to computer right click your external select properties and choose tools tab,thaen check drive for errors

That is what I did. That's when it recovered 2 .iso files, and all the other files were gone (I'm assuming they couldn't be recovered). Also, I did try a file recovery program (I forgot what it is called, I already uninstalled it), and it just game me a message saying that there were no recoverable files on the disk.

S**t thats bad luck damifo24 im sorry about your loss! maybe someone more knowlegeable than I can help.or shed some light on it.

The main question right now is, how important are the files. Like, if you had to choose between the files, and $100, which would you choose. If they are important, some programs might have more luck than others. I can work on making a list of free programs (links included of course). All you have to do is ask.

At this stage we get to the big question - How much is the lost data worth to you.

There are professional data recovery companies that may be able to recover at least some of your data but they are not cheap so it is only worthwhile if the data is both valuable and irreplaceable.

Also as you have already tried to recover the data using user available tools then the chance of recovery is already less than immediately after the crash