Passport on Mac gone Wacko

Documents (but not other files, as far as I can tell) have disappeared from my Passport external hard drive and nearly all remaining files now have the same date on them. Had Passport formatted and working with Mac OSX. It is currently Fat32. Can’t repair permissions in Disk Utility. Ideally I would like to get the documents back, back-up the drive (again) and reformat. Any idea how I can get original documents to re-appear? Thanks much.

Data corruption is common when drives are on FAT32. You can use a recovery software. Try  Mini Tool