I had also stucked in this issue and recovered using http://www.recovermyfiles.com/
It will take lot of time, any how you will get the data back

I've had the same issue, you should remember to take backups on various different storage devices, you can't rely on just one, you should buy a couple of disks and back up that way, you are less likely to loose all your stuff the next time.
it probably asked you to format because of a bad partition or sector of your drive normally because a surge on the line or you have dropped it.