External Hard Drive Busted After PartitionMagic Fail

OK so basically I was trying to install a second partition on my external hard drive but half way through something went wrong and now the hard drive won't work at all. I have read through some similar threads on here and it seems the answer would be to use Active Partition Recovery. The problem is that when I try to run this program, or any other program that needs to access the external hard drive it just freezes and won't load. As soon as I unplug the hard drive it will load. I have tried starting the program and then plugging the hard drive in but it still won't have it. I am desperate to get to my important files and simply don't have the money to pay for them recovering.
When I plug the hard drive in to windows it shows up as a usb device but then it won't show up as an actual drive any more. If I try to run any program to access it like Partition Magic or even device manager they all just freeze.
I have tried the hard drive with another PC and the same happens. Any help would be great.
I am running Windows XP.
Cheers,
Seb.