hey this worked for me sometimes. When ever a hard drive/ storage device fails on a windows computer, put the hard drive into an enclosure and try to open it on a mac.
for some odd reasons Mac's can save the day. no soft ware needed lol. its what i did in the office when ever something like this (very rare) happens. just plug it in the mac and the mac will read it lol
and back up the data on the mac.
if that doesnt work bring it to like an ncix, see what they say.
seagates are the worse drives for reliability |: unless your using like baracudas for a server in a raid config.....
shouldve gotten a wdgreen or samsung f1. best of luck!
edit1: also a quick google search for a software, apparently this software works. it costs money though... but if you know how to get it for free *cough* then yea.. LOL
http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm