Corrupt Files; Unreadable, Undeletable

A friend of mine recently dropped his external hdd on teh ground, and gave it a good stroke. I had him chkdsk /r it; and it fixed it, for the most part. but he says there are random files now that he cant access, edit, or delete.

I read on micrsoft that the solution is to back up - format - and retrieve; without the corrupted files of course. I figured I would check here first and see if there are any other options that may be able to save the files.

Thanks,

No Apples, Just Windows