Illustrator Files do not open after copying

Hi there.
I have a Power Mac G5. I had a problem with the machine, it was running too slow. So I copied all the data from the Hard Drive to an External Hard Drive. Formated the machine and again copied the data from the External Hard Drive to the Hard Disk.
Now, the Illustrator files won't open up. I was using Illustrator CS3 before formatting and same after format.
The error I get is " The file 'test.ai' is in an unknown format and cannot be opened."
Is there anything that can be done to open the files... Cause I nearly have 100GB of .ai file.
Thanks in advance.
P.S.: If needed I can upload one of the .ai files here.

Well this might have been done a little carelessly it may not have also but how long did it take to copy the 100 GB of files? If it took about an hour your are probably alright but if it took like four or five minutes then that would not be normal.
The important thing when you do this type of copying as it is always noted that you back up your data that is copy it to your external hard drive and of course at the same time archive it to other types of media as you should be doing anyway.
So of course you have copies on cd or dvd disks from which you can copy, correct? As of course you know that it is not unheard of for a disk to fail in which case you can lose your data.
I know you did not do any of this and I am not rubbing it in just point out you should have it was not a joke all of us have had such difficulties but we were all afraid of losing our data so we back everything up.
The good news is you can send even the reformatted disk to a disk recovery service like Apple and for about $1,000 and they can actually restore your disk even though you have reformatted it. Break a serious federal law and the Feds will do it free and use it as evidence in court.
I am serious about services that can recover your data even though you have reformatted your disk it would cost you money.
I make a suggestion for your future use do not reformat your disk next time but instead simply back it u and then remove it from your computer and store it somewhere buy a new more modern version and use that they are usually faster and hold more and they tend to crash less.

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