Full Answer
How do I repair an external hard drive?
You can enable the command by following the guide below:
- Open Command Prompt from the Start menu by entering "cmd" and running it as an administrator.
- Type the display window's knowledge with the damaged hard drive's assigned letter: chkdsk I: /f /r /x ("I" is the assigned letter of the scanned drive).
- The command will take some time to scan the disk and fix the detected issue immediately.
How to backup Windows 10 to an external hard drive?
What to Know
- Folders: Go to Start > File History (Win 11) or Backup settings (Win 10) > Add a drive > More options.
- Entire system: Open the Control Panel > Backup and Restore > Create a system image wizard.
- Choose a drive to save the backup.
How do I troubleshoot an external hard drive?
- Open Start.
- Search for Create and format hard disk partitions.
- Click on the top result to open Disk Management.
- If the drive is trying to use an existing drive letter, right-click the volume and select the Change Drive Letter and Paths option.
- Click the Change button.
- Select the Assign the following drive letter option.
How to fix external hard drive not detected Windows 10?
Reinstalling device driver
- Open Start.
- Search for Device Manager.
- Click the top result to open the experience.
- Expand the Disk drives branch.
- Right-click the external drive with the problem, click the Uninstall device option.
- Click the Uninstall button.
- Disconnect the removable drive from your device.
- Restart your computer.
- Reconnect the drive.
How do I fix a corrupted external hard drive Windows 10?
How to fix a corrupted external hard drive WITHOUT formattingOn the desktop, open This PC (My Computer) and select the desired external hard drive. Right-click it and select Properties -> Tools -> Click on Check. ... Use chkdsk.Use Disk Management. ... Use diskpart.
Can you repair an external hard drive?
Generally speaking, the external hard drive errors can be repaired using CMD. What you should note is that regarding "chkdsk f: /f ", the first f should be replaced with the drive letter of the external hard drive.
How do I fix a malfunctioned external hard drive?
How Do I Fix My External Hard Drive That is Not Reading?Examine the Physical Connection between Your PC, Hard Drive, and External Power Source. ... Disable the USB Selective Suspend in Your Computer's Power Options. ... Format and Create a New Partition on the Drive. ... Update or Reinstall Drivers.
How do I restore an external hard drive on Windows 10?
Click the Windows icon, type Disk Management, then click Create and format hard drive partitions. Right-click the disk that says Not Initialized or Offline, then select Initialize Disk or Online. Some external USB hard drives don't have the option to be initialized.
How do I know if my external hard drive is corrupted?
Common symptoms of external hard drive failure include: Clicking, Whirring or Grinding Sounds. Disappearing Files or Folders. File Corruption Error Messages. Extremely Slow Drive Access Times.
Why does Windows 10 not recognize my external hard drive?
If the external hard drive is not showing up in Windows 10, it may be caused by the incompatible file system format. If there is no data on the drive, you can right-click the partition on the drive in Disk Management and select Format to format the drive to NTFS. But this will lost all data.
How do you reset an external hard drive?
Plug in the drive and open Windows Explorer. Right-click the drive and choose Format from the drop-down menu. Select the file system you want, give your drive a name under “Volume label,” and make sure the Quick Format box is checked. Click Start, and the computer will reformat your drive.
Why won't my external hard drive show up?
If the drive still isn't working, unplug it and try a different USB port. It's possible the port in question is failing, or just being finicky with your specific drive. If it's plugged into a USB 3.0 port, try a USB 2.0 port. If it's plugged into a USB hub, try plugging it directly into the PC instead.
How do I fix a corrupted external hard drive without formatting?
How to Restore Data from External Hard Drive Without Formatting?Scan Your Computer for Viruses.Use CHKDSK to Fix File System Errors.Replace Corrupted Files with SFC.Recover Your Files with Data Recovery Software.
Why did my external hard drive suddenly stopped working?
This could be caused by a virus, a corrupted OS, an improper shutdown, or the deletion of an important folder. On the other hand, physical crashes are caused by physical damage to the actual components of the hard drive. Likely causes could be accidental spills, drops, power surges, or plain old wear and tear.
How to repair an unreadable external hard drive?
The process does not require any third-party software and uses the built-in error-checking tool from Windows. It will search the disk for bad sectors and helps in repairing them without the need for format. After completing the process, you can safe ly remove the external drive , reconnect, and see if you can access the contents. If you can access, then copy all the contents to a new folder on the local hard drive. The steps are:
Does iBeesoft have a recovery tool?
Before proceeding with the steps mentioned, ensure to install the software. iBeesoft provides the recovery tool as a trial, where you will enjoy all the features without any limitation. Additionally, connect the external disk that you want to recover files from with the computer .
How to recover data from external hard drive?
Since you're going to recover data from an external hard drive, you need to correctly connect the drive to your Windows computer. Run EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard and choose the exact external drive where you lost data. Click Scan.
Why is my hard drive not opening?
Missing or corrupted system files are responsible for a hard drive with unusual symptoms. It usually occurs when there is a problem during the file save process. So when your hard drive seems to be damaged and you cannot open it, maybe you need to repair the crashed system files at first.
Can a computer come into play without a hard drive?
A computer cannot come into play without a hard drive whirling. To correctly cooperate with a hard drive, or an external one, you must possess some necessary know-how skills for keeping a storage device healthy, and in turn, prolonging its life.
Symptoms of Hard Drive Corruption
When a hard drive has become the victim of corruption, it’s quite easy to tell. Before we look at ways to repair a corrupted hard drive, we must first understand how corruption presents itself.
How to Recover Data From a Corrupted Hard Drive
Before we look at ways to repair your damaged hard drive, we’re going to cover what you can do to recover your data beforehand. Some methods used to fix a corrupted hard drive may involve the deletion of your data, so recovering what data you can now prevent some loss.
8 Methods to Fix Corrupted Hard Drive
Finally, let’s look at ways you can fix your corrupted hard drive. Some of the below methods allow you to repair a corrupted hard disk without formatting, others may require formatting if such methods don’t work. While some methods may seem basic, it’s important you work through the list methodically to ensure no troubleshooting steps are missed.
How to Protect Your Hard Drive From Corruption
Of course, the most effective way of fixing a corrupted hard drive is actively avoiding corruption in the first place. Do so by picking up these simple habits.
Conclusion
The methods outlined above can be used to recover your data and effectively fix a corrupted hard drive. Once the hard drive is free of corruption, you should evaluate what caused the damage, back up your data, and consider a replacement drive.
How to repair a corrupted external hard drive?
If you still cannot repair your corrupted external hard drive, let's think from another angle about recovering data from the corrupted disk using Tenorshare 4DDiG. It is a professional and easy to use tool and able to recover all kinds of data from not only corrupted external hard drive, but also raw/formatted/corrupted partition from laptop/PC. Here're how to do use it: 1 Install and launch the Tenorshare 4DDiG software. 2 On the main interface, you will see all the data types that you can recover. In this case, choose "All Data". 3 Choose your corrupted external hard drive in the "Connected Drives" section. 4 Click on the "Scan" button and Tenorshare 4DDiG will find back all the data on your corrupted external hard drive. 5 After the scan, preview and select your wanted files, click on the "Recover" to proceed. 6 Click "Browse" to define a location. Then Click the "Start Saving" button to save the recovered data.
How to repair a hard drive?
Here are the stepwise guide: Step 1: Head to the Windows search bar and type "CMD" to open it. Right-click on CMD and select the "Run as administrator" option from the context menu. Step 2. Now in the cmd, input chkdsk *:/h/r (where * points to the specific drive you want to repair) and hit "Enter".
How to fix a corrupted hard drive?
Here are the few steps you can do to format your external hard drive: Step 1: Connect the corrupted hard drive to the computer. Step 2: Right-click on the device and select the "Format" option from the context menu.
How to uninstall a device driver?
Step 3: You will be able to see all disks on your PC listed here. Right-click on the hard disk with the errors and click on the "Uninstall device" to uninstall the device drivers. Step 4: After doing so, restart your computer and connect the hard drive again.
How to fix external hard drive not readable?
If your external hard drive is not readable on your PC, try to connect it with another computer to check if the drive is working fine. If it is working on the other PC, then you need to repair the external hard drive by reinstalling the device drivers on your PC. To do so, follow the detailed steps below:
Why is my hard drive corrupted?
It can happen because of multiple reasons. Out of the many, there can be malware infection, an increasing number of bad sectors on the hard disk, or errors in system files.
How to stop a computer from being slow?
To prevent it, use a small piece of cloth and a dip of spirit cleaner to clean your PC.
What to do if your computer cannot read your external hard drive?
If your computer cannot read your external hard drive, you can connect it to another PC to see if the drive can be read and work normally. If it works, you can make external hard drive repair by reinstalling the device drivers on your computer. Here are detailed steps for you to reinstall your hard drive's drivers.
How to uninstall hard drive?
Right-click the hard disk with hard drive failure and then click Uninstall device to uninstall the drive. Step 4. Restart the computer and connect the hard drive. The drivers will start installing automatically in most cases. After restarting, you can check if your external hard drive can be read.
Why is my hard drive corrupted?
Hard drive can become damaged or corrupted due to various hard drive errors like bad sectors on hard drive, file system corruptions. So you must learn these basic tips. After reading this article, you may find that hard drive repair is not so complicated.
Can a hard bad sector be repaired?
Formatting the drive will almost always fix this. But, if it's a hard bad sector, this indicates physical damage , which cannot be repaired.
Can a hard drive run into problems?
Hard drives can run into problems sometimes. This article will show you how to make hard drive repair and recover data from a hard drive. When your hard drive needs to be repaired, you can try the top 4 solutions in this article to fix the hard drive.
Can you recover data with /r?
Some data cannot be recovered with /r. Therefore, it is important to develop habit of building schedule backups. Please note than /f command will lock the selected drive. If it cannot be locked, a message appears that asks you if you want to check the drive the next time you restart the computer.
Can you replace d with another drive letter?
You can replace d with another drive letter. For example, you want to scan external hard drive for errors in Windows 10. If you run chkdsk without the /f parameter on an active partition, it might report spurious errors because it cannot lock the drive.
Can you check a disk for errors in Windows 10?
Aforementioned methods may good enough for disk checking, however, some users encountered CHKDSK stuck at 100 percent, scanning and repairing drive stuck in Windows 10, or CHKDSK Windows 10 stuck error. In that case, you can check disk for errors in Windows 10 with professional third party tools.
What to do if external hard drive is bad?
After checking the bad sector, if the external hard drive has a bad sector, you’d better backup data in advance if possible. If there are important data in the bad sector, you’d better send the hard disk to the professional data recovery center to recover the data directly.
How to remove bad sectors from external hard drive?
Method 1. Remove bad sectors from external hard drive with CHKDSK. First of all, you can use the Window built-in tool - CheckDisk to perform a preliminary check. CHKDSK can be used to check the integrity of a file system and bad sectors of a disk.
How to check if a hard drive is bad?
If you want to check whether there is a bad sector on other hard drives, you can do as below: Step 1. Right click the partition you want to check and select “Advanced” > “Check Partition”. The operation is same as the step 1. in check partition above. Step 2.
How to check if a partition is installed?
Step 1. Download, install and run AOMEI Partition Assistant. Right click the partition you want to check and select “Advanced” > “Check Partition”. Step 2. In the pop-up window, you will see three different options.
How to repair a bad sector?
After that, you need to repair hard drive. 1. Double-click “Computer”, find the external hard drive you want to repair, right-click it and select “Properties”. 2. In the Properties Window, click “Tools” > “Check now…”. 3.
How to check disk space on Windows 10?
1. Press “Windows” + “R” to open the Run box, typing “CMD” and press “Enter”. 2. Input “chkdsk g: /f/r/x” and press “Enter”. (Here “g” is the drive letter of the disk you want to check.) Then, you can see some information of the disk, such as disk space parameters, file size, and the number of bad sectors. Method 2.
What is a bad sector on a hard drive?
It is well-known that a hard drive consists of millions of sectors. A bad sector is simply a tiny cluster of storage space. A sector of the hard drive is defective or damaged. Usually, the bad sector won’t respond to data read and write requests. And all stored information on this bad sectors will get lost.
