Best recovery software?

[VigilanteCS]

So I got a 1.5TB Samsung Story external hdd for christmas. I'm a dumbass and dropped it today on my driveway (probably a 3' drop). It still boots up and sounds fine (no weird sounds), the computer recognizes it, but doesn't see the data and insists it needs formatting.

I have a ton of high def movies on this thing I would love to recover. I tried the freeware PC inspector but whenever I go to recover data I get "error 23, abort, retry, ignore?"

Any ideas? What's the best way to go about this?

Note to self: don't drop your external hard drive.

 

[Elixer]

Testdisk. It is also free.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Also, how are you hooking up the HD again? You might try a internal connection instead of the external case.

 

[Emulex]

did you try the obvious and put it in your pc directly? i've seen damage to cases do the same; take the drive out and put it in another new case or pc direct (if possible) and boom.

caselogic my friend. they make rigid cases to handle 1-4 drives. they work.