The project appears to be damaged, it cannot be opened

[YAMAJM]

Hello,
I encounter this message when I try to open a Premiere project: "The project appears to be damaged, it cannot be opened."

My external hard drive, which I was working on, fell and stopped working. I managed to recover the files from it, but when I try to open the project, I get this error message: "The project appears to be damaged, it cannot be opened."

Is there a solution to this problem?

[Peru Bob]

Try creating a new project and import the old one into it.

[YAMAJM]

I tried but it keeps freezing on FiIes lmport and doesn't progress

[Peru Bob]

Do you have any backups or autosaves?

[YAMAJM]

Yes, they exist, but they all have the same problem.