Please help. I have an external hard drive and it has been working fine. But last week it has started saying that it needs to be formatted before i can use it. i unplug it and plug it back in and it has been working ok. today i plugged it in and it said that it is corrupted. the icon was showing in the computer part but not showing the data storage bit under it as normal. i unplugged it and plugged it back in and then it was saying 'Location is not available F:\ is not accessible. The parameter is incorrect.' so i unplugged it and tried again but the same thing keeps coming up. PLEASE help. i have no idea what to do and i dont want to loose all my photos.
How-To Geek Forums / Microsoft Office
HELP! External hard drive 5 years of photos HELP!
(9 posts)
If the pictures are very valuable, you will need Commercial Recovery of the Hard Drive.
Examples Only:
http://www.securedatarecovery.com/contact-us.html
http://www.dataretrieval.com/
There are many more you can find by searching the term "recover hard drive".
Below is software that I have used to recover data from corrupt hard drives on many occasions and has worked well, alas it's not free but as raphoenix said if the pictures are valuable it could be worth the expense.
Also, always have 2 backups of your data, you never can be to careful.
http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm
You can try a free demo of the above and it will detail what it can recovered before you purchase. Could be worth a go at least!
While this is too late to help the OP (sorry about that), this is an opportunity to point out the need for backups. Not just one back up, either because they can also fail. If one values one's data, then one should have a minimum of two backups: one onsite and one offsite. Sure, the media required for backups, especially multiple backups, are costly but what is the value of your data?
If you take it a local shop ask them what they might be able to do before letting them just plug it in another system and really destroying the data for good.
When you plug the drive in go to disk management and see if there is a drive letter assigned to the drive. Sometimes it's better to leave your external hdd plugged in all the time vs. plugging and unplugging.
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