Hard Drive data/partition recovery

[bindog]

Hey All

I need some help here...

I have a Seagate 500GB external hard drive...

I was transferring files to it at work and my laptop froze... since then the drive doesnt appear when I plug the pc in...

I went to disk manager and the drive didnt appear in the drive list at the top, so i tried to assign a drive letter etc, nothing has helped... it keeps telling me to format the drive before use...

I have tried various data recover programs, but they all want to copy the files (which are clearly still on the drive) to another drive, the folder structure seems messed up, and the file names seem lost???

Is there no way to just reidentify the partition / file system on the drive without copying the data off somewhere else?

Thanks

 

[bindog]

I know youve probably heard this question plenty before, but I would really appreciate any advice you could offer??