how to open external hard disk without format?

Purplexint

Reputable
Mar 4, 2015
1
0
4,510
Hello guys..
I can't open my hard disk at laptop and suddenly it asked to format it. What should I do? Lots of important files there. The laptop can detect it but can't open the disk. Please someone help me in easiest ways..thx in advance!
 
Hey Purplexint. First you could try the basics - try the drive with a different USB cable (not longer than 12") and with a different computer to see if the same thing happens. When you say that it's detected, would you please open Disk Management and see if it's recognized there and post a screenshot of what it says about the drive and the partition? Here's how to open it: How to access Disk Management in Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8 to manage hard drives
Other than that, you could try accessing the drive via Linux Live USB/CD to see if it's recognized properly and if you can get your data this way. You could also try some of the data recovery options listed in this thread here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html

If you manage to get your data, then I'd recommend that you download the manufacturer's diagnostic tool and test the drive with it to see if it has any errors or bad sectors.

Hope that helps. Let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD
 
Let this be a lesson, the external should be the backup, not where you put important files that you cant loose.
An external drive is actually more likely for failure then an internal drive because the drives in externals are lower quality, and with an external you are one fall off of the desk away from failure.
 
@Purplexint, I would start by examining the SMART report with a tool such as CrystalDiskInfo.

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

Look for reallocated, pending, or uncorrectable sectors. This will tell us the physical state of the drive. If the drive has numerous bad sectors, then it would be advisable to clone it (with ddrescue) rather than thrashing it with numerous data recovery software.