Disk corrupted and unreadable

[Fulsam]

My external USB hard drive stopped functioning a day ago. Now it gives me an error message saying "The drive structure is corrupted and unreadable". Can this be fixed? I have some mapping projects I need to finish on there

I also got that darn Google redirect virus, but I managed to fix it by reformatting, (It was on the C drive, which didn't have much on it anyway).

 

[LookinAround]

Run chkdsk on the drive. The link i provided is ok even if you run Vista (vs. XP).

1. Run chkdsk /r AND be sure to also include the volume drive letter (or it defaults to check your C: drive)
2. Understand chkdsk can take a loooong time to run (especially if it's a large hard drive). Even if it looks like your screen is hanging.. wait at least 30+ minutes before deciding the screen might not be updating any longer (if it really does hang)

 

[Fulsam]

Also, when I go to the drive properties, it says it has 0 bytes free and 0 bytes full. It also says the file system is RAW

FIXED!!! The hard drive now works like nothing ever happened to it! Thanks!

The maps, game, and editor I was using for the project weren't even harmed at all, and worked like they did right before the incident!

Once again, Thanks!

 

[LookinAround]

What was the answer? Chkdsk? or did you do something else for it to work??

 

[Fulsam]

Yea, I used chkdsk. Here is the parameter I used:


chkdsk F: /f

And after the program finished, it worked again.

 

[LookinAround]

Glad chkdsk helped! A couple other words of advice

Note !!NEVER, EVER!! unplug a USB drive before you first either

• Stop the USB drive. You can use the Safely Remove Hardware icon to stop the USB device. Do not unplug the device until the device is stopped
• Shutdown Windows

just fyi if you didn't already know... USB devices are "hot pluggable". This means you can plug them in any time but does not mean you can unplug / power-off anytime! Doing so may corrupt your disk and result in partial or total data loss!!​

Also, you can minimize the odds of corruption by turning off write caching for your external hard drive

• Open Device Manager
• Expland the category Disk Drives to find your USB external drive listed
• Rt click Properties. click Policies tab. Check Optimize for quick removal. Click OK

 

[fawn]

i have a similar problem. But mine is that on my External Harddrive, some folders i can access. But a certain folders says that its unreadable and is corrupted.

I havn't tried the checkdisk thing. Because i read somewhere that if you do that, you might loose some files/information...... is that true?