It is not impossible for you to recover data from external drive.
Once your external drive can be picked up by your computer, you can use a Data Recovery software to recover the lost files with great ease.
The one I'd love to recommend to you is [http://www.goshareware.com/windows-data-recovery.html|Hodo Data Recovery] software.
It is easy to handle with simple steps: download - connect- scan- recover.