I've managed to recover a certain amount of data on two hard drives that were about to breathe their last in the past few days.
Try:
1. Start > Run > type in cmd then click OK to get a command prompt.
2. Type in chkdsk e: /r (replace e: with the drive letter of your external hard drive).
It will churn through five steps and might take a while to complete, but I've had good results with the procedure.
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