I was copying a couple of folders onto my external hard drive when my laptop crashed.
Now the whole drive needs formatting...

I have years and years of photos and files on it. I have some stuff backed up but I don't want to lose over a tb of data if there's any way to recover it, I can't refilm my baby brother's first steps.

Google's answers so far have been unhelpful or risky, can anyone give me any advice?(please don't say make more backups)