Windows to Mac - OS or TM Lost File Structure (External HDD)

Damage control please.
I have an old Seagate One-Touch 150GB external drive I use to back up my old Windows machines.
I have (had) four machines backed up in there - 1 Windows Me and 3 XPs holding business and personal files for the last 8 years.
I needed a file and since my Vaio laptop broke down I connected the Seagate to my MBP for the first time.
The Seagate showed up fine, double-clicked it and began looking for my file. No problems until...
I clicked an old MP3 to listen to it, iTunes came up. No biggie yet. Then Time Machine came up asking me if I would like to use my Seagate as back-up. I clicked O.K. and made sure no formatting or erasing happened.
Suddenly OSX alerted me that the USB hard-drive was not ejected properly. I though it was a faulty USB cable. But after a dozen tries and reading two hours of 'Apple Discussions' and web searches I find myself without a clue how to recover my files without recurring to a $100+ service or software recovery solution.
All I did was look for a file and play a song! Please help.
I tried the Seagate with an XP machine but as with the Mac, it wants to initiate or format the drive.
XP disk utility tells me that the file structure is RAW and Disk Management tool shows 16MB Unallocated and No File Structure whatsoever.
I am sorry I upset the Apple Gods by trying to dig into my Windows past. I beg mercy and forgiveness

Maurizio,
I clicked O.K. and made sure no formatting or erasing happened.
Well, there's the problem. Whether or not you knew it was happening, OS X must first re-format any drive for use with Time Machine, unless it is already formatted as HFS+. In short, the drive has been erased. I feel your pain.
On the bright side, your data will not have been touched; it is still there, just not listed in a directory structure (file system). You will need to look into one of the many file recovery software packages. The drive is not damaged, physically, so a professional service is really not necessary. Just find a suitable software title that can do the job of file recovery for you. These can be had for not too much $$$. Stick with Windows titles, though, since the files were stored as part of a native Windows file system.
Scott

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