Files gone from an external hardrive but the volume remains

Hey people.

I have a 1TB toshiba hard drive. I've had a problem where when I would disconnect it from any computer and plug it in again all the folders and files become shortcuts which don't work and I could access everything only through Total Commander or Winrar. So I just put all the contents of the hd into one folder called "all" and would transfer them into a new one when the all folder would "break". Now I performed the standard windows "fix external drive" to see if it would fix it. But now I can't even access the files with Winrar or Total Commander! The volume remains the same as it was so they must be in there. The only items left in the drive are as follows:
$RECYCLE.BIN (folder)
found.000 (folder)
System Volume Information (hidden folder)
.dropbox.device (exe)
$RECYCLE.BIN (broken shortcut)
found.000 (broken shortcut)

Please help me guys! I have lots of important projects on that drive, otherwise I would have formatted it.