I had a rescue job for a mate recently and tried numerous Windows recovery solutions on her hard drive, which was placed in an external USB hard drive hub which chugged along for hours analyzing the RAW hard drive, when it recovered something half the time it wouldn't open!
Then tried a Puppy Linux CD, which I was given in 2009 ago by a IT Tech mate, I never used it til last week, Linux runs from the CD, nowt installed
It was very quick and copied all the folders structures and file structures, they are now safely stored on her external hard drive and she is very happy as she has 99.999% of useable data
I recommend Puppy Linux very highly and it's free 
No guarantees with this link, it gives the general idea about the best data recovery solution in my book
https://www.winhelp.us/recover-files-using-puppy-linux.html
Sad innit, I thought I'd made the discovery of the Century and no one agrees or disagrees 
The Linux option doesn't seem that good for deleted stuff, corrupted drives which have turned to RAW, Perfick! 
Hopefully it may help someone when they have lost a load of data due to file corruption
Cheers my dears
Sorry i didn't comment , you have found a good solution , i happen to prefer using BARTPE , which is a cut down windows that boots from cd-rom / dvd / usb stick ( depending on whether the problematic machine can boot from those )
Anything that can run as its own o/s , and allow access to the file structure on the drives is good , its finding the one that works best for you.
The other version i used was DSL ( damn small linux )
Thanks Gary for the extra file recovery options
I had trouble a while back and lost a load of emails, as Windows wouldn't let me copy the hidden folders or wanted Admin permission
I also had an automatic backup option but it missed copying my emails
Linux doesn't understand these restrictions in my limited experience and would have saved me a lot of grief if I'd made copy with that method
Nowadays I clone my drives with Reflect once a month and also save local MyDocs stuff on the fly with Windows File History to a large USB drive
Plus I have 3 backups of all my data
OK, I'm Paranoid and happy 
Having numerous backups isn't paranoid , its sensible.
My main pc has 2 x 3TB drives for data
each drive is 2 partitions
2.5tb and .5tb
the drive letters are set up so that main data is on first drive 2.5tb partition with its backup partition on drive 2 --- d: and e:
the swap file/temp files are on the .5tb partition on drive 2 , backup on drive 1--- x: and y:
i use freefilesync to automatically backup the important folders from main partitions to backup partitions , so that i have at minimum a drive with 2 partitions safe if one drive fails
if both fail , i don't have a complete set of backups , though i do have most of the files i could not get elsewhere also backed up to an external 1.5tb drive.
I also have dropbox / amazon / google drive / onedrive holding driver files and software updates for older software that may not be readily available to download should disaster strike.
I need to set up my windows 2012 server again , which i use to backup files from all my older pc's to one central storage area ( it has 2 x 3tb and 2 x 2tb drives ) the two larger drives are a raid 1 ( mirror ) the 2 smaller drives are a raid 0 copy of the data on the 2 larger drives , so in theory it has 3 identical sets of data on it , all kept synced using freefilesync too.
Thanks Gary
I don't feel Paranoid any longer
However I don't trust the security of Onedrive or any online resource, however for sysytem/programm drivers/installers it sounds like a great idea
I have a Seagate Go-Flex wi-fi system but sadly the drive corrupted to RAW, a few months ago, unfortunately I wasn't up to speed with Linux then, As I had two backups I didn't bother to recover the data, I have restored most of it now but don't trust the drive for the only copy of anything, Seagate would have restored my data for a pretty penny, Linux would probably do it for nowt. This drive is used is in addition to my three backups and mainly stores music or photos 