How do I recover the contents of my external hard drive?

[Alexius08]

I have a 300GB Western Digital external hard drive. It seems to have glitched more than a year ago when I accidentally unplugged it. Before it went down, I stored 200GB worth of data, including some Civ4 mods I downloaded, save files and snapshots, some of which were for my current story.

Until recently, I wasn't able to fix it because of the erratic power supply in my place. Now, how do I start the recovery process? Unless I get access to a larger hard drive for copying the disk image (which I don't have right now), I'm not using CHKDSK because of the mess it usually does.

EDIT: Here's some screenshots that might be of use to you.

 

[Souron]

One thing you could try is taking the actual hard-drive out of the enclosure, and putting it either into another enclosure or hooking it up directly inside your pc.

 

[Petek]

Google on recover raw file system. Lots of advice on how to recover your data. I haven't used any of these techniques myself, so can't vouch for any of the utilities that you will find.

 

[Zelig]

Is the data important?

If so, do not plug it in and do not attempt recovery yourself.

Contact a professional data recovery service. Expect to pay anywhere from $500-$2000.

In the future, plan for any of your drives to fail catastrophically at any time, and make backups.

 

[Alexius08]

Is the data important?

If so, do not plug it in and do not attempt recovery yourself.

Contact a professional data recovery service. Expect to pay anywhere from $500-$2000.

In the future, plan for any of your drives to fail catastrophically at any time, and make backups.

I can't afford to pay one, and I don't know where in the Philippines I could find one.

One thing you could try is taking the actual hard-drive out of the enclosure, and putting it either into another enclosure or hooking it up directly inside your pc.

I can't do that with my laptop without rendering it unbootable.

Google on recover raw file system. Lots of advice on how to recover your data. I haven't used any of these techniques myself, so can't vouch for any of the utilities that you will find.

I have tried, and the recovery process is underway with one of the tools I downloaded.

Just in case I fail to repair the master file table, what is the file signature of a Civ4 BTS save game?

 

[Souron]

I can't do that with my laptop without rendering it unbootable.

With a laptop, just by an external enclosure or usb adapter cable.