Lost all my daughter's baby videos and pictures on my WD passport elite 500 gb. Can someone help?

Me and my girlfriend cant access the files on our wd external hardrive. when we connect it to the laptop, it says something about file is corrupted and needs to be formatted. I know formatting will delete everthing for sure so i took it out and havent messed with it. ALL of our daughter's baby videos and pics are in there and it means the world to my girlfriend. Im not doing too good financially and no way can i afford to get it fixed. it fell bearly 3 ft off the desk and landed on carpet so im hoping its something minor. Does anybody know how can i fix it without costing an arm and a leg?