Double Trouble – SD Card and External HDD Corrupted

I had a double trouble last semester break. What’s going on? My micro SD card that stores a few important pictures that I have no backup at all has corrupted when it suddenly dropped off from my wallet. A few days later, my external hard drive also corrupted. The hard drive far more important than my micro SD card, because it stores all the memories of my school, matriculation and undergraduate. I have searched the internet on how to fix this problem. I have come to many suggestions, and I even desperately want to open my external hard drive casing and connect the drive directly to the motherboard, because it is one of the suggestions to make the hard drive alive again.

What I did to recover my data from my corrupted micro SD card?

I have tried insert it into both my tab and my phone memory card slots, but it did not detected all. Then I have tried to open it on my PC using a memory card reader, but, it also not detected.
Suddenly I got an idea to open it using another operating system.
I have attached the card reader to Ubuntu OS, and miracle have happened, my micro SD card was detected and I was able to copy the data, but sometime it would not responding and I have to redo copying over again. Luckily the copying process done successfully.

What I did to recover my data from my external HDD?

I have tried to do the same with my external hard drive, to open it using Ubuntu OS, but I do not know why it did not working. I have tried a few suggestions that I have found on the internet, only a few which are without the risk of losing my data forever. After the suggestions that i tried did not work, I just became very upset and do not know what to do. So another option is try to recover some of the data using file recovery software. I tried to recover the data from my old PC because I used to store the data on that machine, but it just not there. One day, I just connect it to my laptop and a miracle happen, my external HDD can be detected again, and I spent times to do backup of my very precious data in there.