External Hard Drive Problem

Please can anyone help me with a problem? I'm trying to help a friend.

He keeps all his data on a 500GB external hard drive, mostly photographs, which he hasn't backed up for over a year. (Yes, I know, first big error!)

He was trying to write one file from this hard drive to CD through the PC, but instead of selecting the file, he selected the whole folder (which was 20+GB). Nero obviously couldn't do this. When he tried to go back into the same folder he found that there was multiples of folders of the same name duplicated folders within folders. The pictures that were in the original folder are no longer there but are duplicated in about the 15th folder now duplicated within this weird new cascade of folders. The images no longer have their original titles but have been retitiled to the first five letters then ~ and a few more letters.

My first instinct was to back up the data on the hard drive before doing anything. However, when I came to copy it to back it up, it would not do it.

Event viewer says the external drive is corrupt and unusable. Check disk will not run either. However, all the data is still there in some form and accessible.

Any suggestions are most welcome.

 

My friend recommends this
http://www.roadkil.net/program.php?ProgramID=29
although I haven't tried it myself.

If you get a copy then you can try deleting corrupted folders and running Check Disk again.

I might try booting into Safe Mode or maybe the Windows Recovery Console (I am not sure if it would see an external drive) and run Check Disk there.

 

Thanks for this Mattman.

I'll let you know how I get on.