[help] How should I recover my files on a "Bad Disk" External?

Hello all!

First of all I am new to this forum so I would like to say hello and thank you so much in advance for your kind guidance and support!

I am encountering some slight difficulties with my External Hard drive.. I am running an dell studio xps 1640 laptop with windows 7 64 bit home premium. Unfortunately last night my external hard drive had i guess a "loose connection" not to my computer.. to the connection to the hard drive. (Mind you its an iOMEGA 500GB). Unfortunately by accident it fell about 1 ft off my coffee table. I have so many important files on there (College Notes, Lectures, Homework, Music) and now it wont even read on my windows laptop. I tried connecting it to my windows 8.1 and windows 10 desktops....but all it does it sees the device but it wont browse the disk through file explorer to see my files.

I cant initialize the disk either! I get an redundancy error. I have attached below my screenshots of my issue. Please help!

Best Regards
Kevin =]

whs said:

I would try to run a chkdsk /f /r. You may have to give it a drive letter.

i cant really assign a drive letter \= at least to my knowledge i don't know how to with the given situation im in. Windows wont even initialize the drive.

whs said:

Try Linux

windows - chkdsk /f /r alternative in ubuntu linux - Super User

I will try that. Question though. With MiniTool partition.. i have started the partition recovery wizard scan. Should that work as well? or should I cancel it and try the linux? Mind you it was running for about 3 hours its at 49%

whs said:

Keep the Mini Tool running. If that works, then you are in the clear.

thank you! i will update you asap!

Layback Bear said:

How did disk #2 in the picture post #1 get to be (Read Only)?

I have no idea honestly!! that is where I am stuck! The hard drive has a loose connector and i guess it kept getting disconnected and reconnected back. It was working yesterday up until the incident. The MiniTool isnt working as well. I have no idea what to do.

I have plugged it into my windows 8.1 desktop hoping some miracle could happen lol