There are many out there. I've tried several over the years with widely varying levels of success. Recently, someone came to me needing to retrieve a deleted Excel file from a USB flash drive. I tried portable Recuva and had no luck. I then tried Wise Data Recovery Portable. It worked! So, IMO, you may have to try more than one for success. Besides the 2 above, I've also tried PhotoRec, Restoration, Active@ File Recovery (paid). But as I said, my luck has varied greatly.
Thanks for the suggestions. I found a nice tool called WinHex, it was able to recover all my files from the ext hard drive.