I feel like I've just been burgled

I've always thought it a good idea to have 'puter files saved/backed up somewhere safe. I had years of music files & clips, photos, movies, spreadsheets etc etc safely saved to a removable hard drive.
Got a new 'puter & of course removed everything from the old one. That was some time ago. The last time I accessed the files on the removable hd, everything was there.
A couple of days ago, I went to restore everything only to find I couldn't access the drive. I ran chkdsk & finished up with a pile of .chk files that represent precious little of what I originally had.
I can redownload my w/shop manual & parts list from the forum, but everything else was years of collecting. I'm just a bit pi$$ed off right now.

Just venting.