Wait so where's your computer, in like an apartment for college or what?

Take the Hard Drive to a data recovery specialist like Bust Buy, Staples, Office Depot, Ultimate Electronics etc. Usually those stores have the equipment necessary to recover data on a corrupted drive [like yours]. The prices are high for data recovery (sometimes $200-$300) but if you look around you will probably be able to find a cheaper price. Unfortunately though the price will still be relatively high, but in your case it might be worth saving those files. The same thing happened to me. I did alot of graphic design and programming and lost it all because I had not backed up my data on an external drive or USB. Even if you don't get it recovered I highly suggest your back up your information, as I had once wished I was told the same. Good luck, and sorry about the problem. Hope this helps :)

If you can at least connect the drive and have it recognized, you may be able to use recovery software to get it back. What a lot of them do is let you download and run the software for free, and from there it can at least tell you if it CAN get the data back. If you can, you pay for a license of the software, and it will do the recovery.

Also lol@external drives out in the public, what were you thinking?

Lol nice job breaking your your HDD, or it failed on it's own. Your only option now is see if you can get the data recovered by someone else.

Had the same thing happen to me, a "friend" knocked down my HD, computer went through different stages of no-I-don't-like-your-harddrive­. The only way to save the files is to get a company to do it, and they're extremely expensive, like no private person would do it expensive.
The guy who knocked it down didn't want to compensate for the cost of a new one, let alone five years worth of data. Needless to say, he is no longer my friend.
It's a harsh lesson about putting your external in a safe, stable place, and keep backups. And in my case that some people shouldn't be friended. Now there's no piece of hardware I handle with more care than my external.

Hey. I've seen other people suggest it, but if you have access to a Linux system try plugging it in and see if it at least recognises it as a new device, if not a disk partition. Then I would suggest googling/installing the following programs: recoverdm, anyfs, testdisk, photorec, ddrescue and magicresue. They're all command-line but I assume you'd be willing to learn (if you're not already accustomed) seeing what's at stake ):
Good luck!

I´m so sorry to hear what happened. I hope that it turns out better soon.

You are probably want to give Recuva a run on the HDD.

Brilliant TF2-Clips , I love them :)