siulayhumga

wow long text.... Never buy brand name USB external drives if the data is important to you. If you really need an external drive, buy your own case and HDD. The drive in brand name USB drive usually are defected, returned or C grade disk. That's why  it is cheaper.

The store owner is not doing a very good job. Look like he used some generic file recovery tools which may or may not be helpful in this situation. Next time you run into same situation, call up the drive maker. They usually have customized tools which may be able to recover the data.