External hard drive with symbols as folder names (e.g. nÆ7:)

Mansfield15

Reputable
Nov 25, 2015
1
0
4,510
I have had no problem opening this hard drive on my old Windows desktop computer or Mac laptop, however on the new Windows desktop computer that I am using now, I plugged in my Buffalo hard drive and the folder names seem to come up as symbols and I cannot even open the folders not the documents. Below are a few examples of what I'm talking about. They come in black and green colours.

b'ö5û┴.00T
!$~½▀.≥)_
%┐Ωè"d.≥x
/"¬)╗{▌.ÿÄ

Does this mean that it has been corrupted? Or can I do anything to retrieve these?
 
Hi there Mansfield15,

Does the drive appear just fine on your old system or Mac laptop? In case it does, you can just back up all the data stored on it, attach it to your new system and reformat.
In case this happens when the drive is attached to your other systems as well, you can boot up Ubuntu from a CD or a flash drive and see if the content would be properly recognized: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/267999-32-recover-data-mode
After that, you can just test the drive: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

Cheers,
D_Know_WD
 

TRENDING THREADS