the disk you inserted is not readable by this computer?

Hello. I know this question gets asked a lot by I've read some of the answers by people who asked this question and none of the have worked for me.

I have a TOSHIBA 1TB Portable Hard Drive. Have had it for about 8 months. About a month ago it came up with the 'the disk you inserted is not readable by this computer' also the HD was not coming up on my Macbook (10.9.1 with Mavericks i believe). I've tried to fix this in Disk Utility but i cannot press the 'Repair Disk' or 'Verify Disk' buttons because they are gazed. The same thing happened to my old HD, which was a Seagate Backup Plus. I erased that HD and now it works fine. But for my TOSHIBA I have important files on it and wish to keep them.

I have tried it on Windows and it wouldn't come up. Although i managed to get into the properties of the HD but the 'Tools' tab wasent there so i couldnt do anything.

Anybody know what i can do without having to buy or download any software? MANY THANKS