Help> Can't recover QDF files

I had a complete hard drive failure. Prior to that time Quicken 2003 was not backing up but I would copy the qdf, qel, qph and in fact the entire program onto my backup drive from time to time. After I got a new hard drive, I reinstalled Quicken 2003 but found that there was no way I could get the newly installed program to read the qdf, qel and qph from the back up drive. It just wouldn't validate them. I can't read them at all and I can't convert them into anything else either. I do not have the knowledge to open them up in hex editor and read them that way. I know the files were not corrupted because the backup drive did not fail. I went to the intuit website and tried all the various things it indicates to open these files, but nothing worked. So I have my financial files intact and uncorrupted in files I cannot open. I obtained programs that will unpassword protect and unencrypted quicken files, but these programs say that the files are neither password protected nor encrypted. I am completely puzzled. How do I get to my data? Is there a program that will read these files?