When I try to access a folder in one of my hard drives, I get an error message saying the drive is not formatted. The data must be corrupted. I have tried about 10 different data recovery tools, the free ones are useless, they just detect deleted data. The ones that detect the corrupted files cost over £100 to register the product in order to recover the data. I have tried deleting the folder in order to recover it again with one of the free ones, but i can't delete it. Does anyone know of a decent tool I can use to recover the data?

Hello Tom

Welcome to PC Help Forums

Can you give us a rough guide list as to the 10 you have used so we won't waste time searching and suggesting them to you.

I've tried the following:
ADRC Data Recovery Tools v1.01
Disk Patch
Easy Recovery Professional Edition 6.1
File Scavenger 3.0
Free Undelete 2.0
PC Inspector File Recovery
Recover My Files
Restoration 2.5.14
Stellar Phoenix FAT & NTFS
Test Disk 6.5
ZAR 8.0

Well here's a few you can look at:
Data Recovery - Ondata - Hard Drive Repair
Free file and disk utilities.
Free data recovery downloads
Free data Recovery Software Roundup! (All freeware data recovery tools.)
Free Data Recovery

Thanks, but the first one costs $100 and the rest are useless. The drive has now completely disappeared from my computer, so I can't select it in the recovery programs.

Well to me if these files are really important then I would send the drive away to be fixed, very expensive I know but this is where the immortal words "Back Up" spring to mind.
Sorry Tom.