Hello challengers, I'm in need of help here.
Recently I decided to convert my Fat32 external hard drive into NTFS(for larger files support) using the "convert "" /FS:NTFS" command. However, during this process something went wrong and the process crashed.
Now I'm unable to access my external hard drive.
I get the error message when I try to open the drive, that my drive is corrupted and unreadable. I am aware that I can format into NTFS or Fat32 to make it work again, however I would really hate to lose the data on it.
So I need a way to either copy that data to a folder on my computer, restore my external hard drive back to normal with no data lost or something in between. Any suggestions will be appreciate.
Don't write anything on the damaged drive.
Recuva is a good free solution. It doesn't work in very extreme cases though. If that's the problem there are more serious software solutions for this, like Tenorshare Data Recovery, but they aren't free(cost $20).
Another possibility is looking for a repair shop that does this kind of thing. Some of them specialize in data recovery and can restore the files in almost any situation(but no guarantee and cost a lot of money).
You can google search their name to get it.
It shows up in 'My Computer' as a drive letter (F: drive).So I can run chkdsk.
Alright, got Tenorshare Data Recovery now, however I'm unsure whether to use the FAT or the NTFS.
The hard drive was original FAT, however it was converting to NTFS when it crashed. Which should I choose then? (chkdsk says NTFS)
NTFS.
Also when you delete files, the data is normally never removed. Just the entry in the FAT or NTFS MFT is removed. So the data still exists, and unless that area gets overwritten, programs like the one you use can get it back. If it gets overwritten, which can happen easily if you just deleted it yourself, and continue to use the drive.
If you have space for it, before you do anything, make a backup of the disk. Use one of the several disk manager tools out there, and use the RAW copy method (RAW copy copies sectors, it does not care which file system is on the disk).
And if you still have plenty of space, and you're running Windows 7, you can restore the backup to a virtual disk drive and try the recovery on the virtual disk instead of the physical one. Google/Bing "windows 7 vhd" for more info.
I'm usually pretty good at spotting spam, but this one eluded me... But I agree, looks like spam, and I would not be surprised if there's a new post soon (at around 9 pm tonight) that the app he's trying fixed everything, and he's so happy, and here's the link...
I don't know if the original post is spam or not but I have some info about this since I have unfortunately had to do this a few times and thought I would share my thoughts. Someone else can hopefully use this information.
Since there are plenty of free solutions, I don't see any reason why anyone should pay for these tools.
- Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD): This is a Windows based Live CD. Meaning you burn the ISO to a CD and boot from the disc. The interface looks pretty similar to Windows environment. There are tools that let you (re)partition the drive. There are also tools that let you look at the raw data and recover chunks if possible. Mind you, that is a lot of work no matter which tool you use. The CD works great but it just takes a very long time to boot up.
- System Rescue CD: Linux based Live CD. Gives you a plenty of tools to look at the drive content and repartition if necessary.
- Ubuntu Rescue Remix: Another Linux based Live distribution that can run on CD as well as flash memory. The cool thing about this is that it includes a utility called Photorec which was created to be able to recover images and other media files from a disc.
