external hard drive issue

hi

i had a wd 500gb external hd running my imac as the internal one had died and could not afford to repair at the moment. 2 days ago the external took a tumble and the usb on the exteral was damaged. i got a new enclosure. to check it was working i 1st pluged it to my vista desktop. it then installed the drivers and i could locate it in device management but not via my computer.

i unplugged and hooked it too my mac. same thing here. as the internal is dead, i let it try to boot up as i had before the tumble. no luck. i restarted with the install disk in and went to utilities and it displayed the external. however i tried to install MOS but it did not give me the option of the external.

going back to utilites it would not let me select anything on first aid. i could erase the external but i desperatley need about 7 files off before doing so.

is there anyway i can get those files before im left with erase&re-formatting? or any to make it boot off the external as it used to do?

cheers

Your entire post is a bit confusing but let's see if we can do some educated guessing as to what might have happened....

It could be when you attached the external to your Vista desktop that it might have reinitialized the drive. (you mentioned drivers were installed and that doesn't sound right) The Mac format might have been wiped out.
I don't know if that's what happened, but a possibility.

If you need files off that external hard drive and you can't get into it, you can try to use specialized software. Most specialized software is expensive.

As far as your old internal hard drive is concerned, why don't you try to replace it yourself? It's a fairly difficult task but with the right instructions and tools it's doable. Take a look on iFixit: The free repair manual for instructions.