How to repair FAT without data loss

[itnewbee]

I have an external drive for file storage. Something has happened to the file allocation table so now when I connect it to any computer, it says I need to reformat. I see there have already been some comments on this but I I keep getting the below error message when i try to fix it;

I have the same problem. I tried chkdsk G: /f

It returned:
The type of file system is FAT32.
An error occurred while reading the file application table (FAT 1).
An error occurred while reading the file application table (FAT 2).
There are no readable file application tables (FAT).

Any suggestions as to what to try now? I have hundreds of travel photos on my hard drive and don't to loose them.

Any help would be great thanks!!

 

[TerryLaze]

You can try free partition recovery programs like this one,they scan the whole disk and try to figure out what the partitions where.
https://www.easeus.com/partition-recovery/

Totally free and open sourced testdisk command line only though so it's a bit harder to operate.

Do not use windows checkdisk on problems like this because they will easily "fix" the problem by deleting everything...
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk