External Hard Disk Drive Corrupt!!

Hi,
I am running windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2. I bought a Packard bell Plug & Play SATA hard disk drive, installed it and was using it to store music tracks and photos.
My daughter, needing an extra USB slot just pulled the wire out rather than going through the 'safely remove hardware' option :cry. When I reconnected the external drive, I can connect it on start up but when I try to access the drive (I) by clicking on the item I get the following message:

I:\ is not accessible. the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable

Is there any hope in recovering the 'lost' files? A freeware program would be nice as well!!
Many thanks in advance from my daughter who hopes this may reduce her grounding untill 2009, instead of 2019!

Andy

 

Go to My Computer right click on ''I'' drive/Properties/Tools then Check Now and tick off both boxes and pray