SATA/IDE hard drive not working on Windows XP

My hard disk is full of irreplacable things but I cannot access it. First it took a long time to appear on 'My Computer' then when I tried to open it, I got a message stating' F not accessible, I/O device error'. The drive was showing as enabled and working properly but it would not open. It also said 'parameter' not correct.

I checked the web for help. I did a chkdsk F:\F run. It listed segments as unreadable. It ended with 'Deleted corrupt attribute list entry with type 128 in file 2364.' It wrote this about five times then finished with 'An unspecified error occurred'.I don't know what to do next as couldn't find anything that helps.

I also did a chkdsk on the c drive from windows hoping this may help. This went through five verification stages. Under data verification it wrote 'windows replaced bad clusters in file 2499 of name winxp\system32\mf3216.dll', and replaced bad clusters in 'file 4830 of name\winxp\inf\netwv48.pnf' and in 'file 37751 of name winxp\nstaln1\14fa347.msp'.It then finished verifying everything and wrote 'volume is clean' (I tried doing a windows chkdsk for f drive where harddisk connected but cannot open it)

I tried doing a scan on f drive but can't as won't access. I tried accessing it through documents,cmd/run, search but still can't access. Now it doesn't show up at all under my computer , documents etc but is listed under devices as working and enabled. I tried the windows troubleshooting but that doesn't work either.Note:the hard disk comes on and makes noise/light that connecting but doesn't show on laptop.

Please help. I can't bear to think I've lost everything on the disk. I've tried what I could find out but now I'm really stuck. Thank-you.
 
Thank you for your reply. I looked at the link but there is a long list and I do not know which one I should download. Please clarify as I do not want to do the wrong thing and make it worse! Many thanks for your help.
 
That list is what comes on the disk, it just also provides links so you can click through and see the webpages for those programs. When you download and burn the iso, you get an option to run those programs individually or boot into a mini xp mode where you have the familiar Windows GUI. Once in there you can launch those programs. The likelyhood of the first one you pick working isn't very high, but you may get lucky and one of those programs can recover some data for you.
 
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