External hard needs formatting, but how to save the data?

[Modabber]

Hello everyone,

My external ADATA HDD can not be opened by windows and wants formatting. Even I tried chkdsk command, but it says:
“The type of file system is NTFS. Unable to determine volume version and state. CHKDSK aborted.”
What can I do, to save my data?

Thanks in advance,

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Modabber,

That is really unpleasant.

My advice would be to use some partition/data recovery software, in order to retrieve the data stored on the drive. It would be best to save all the recovered data on another drive.
After that, you can check the drive's health status out and see if there is something wrong with it: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[bliq]

sounds like MBR is corrupted. Look for some method to rebuild the MBR by reading the files on the drive, which are probably not damaged. It may be possible to at least recover some of your files. Ths is why they say when you're getting rid of a hard drive, you need to zero it out a few times in order to destroy the files as well as the MBR and partition tables, etc.

 

[slyverine]

have you ran it with the /r /f parameters?

 

[Modabber]

Hi there Modabber,

That is really unpleasant.

My advice would be to use some partition/data recovery software, in order to retrieve the data stored on the drive. It would be best to save all the recovered data on another drive.
After that, you can check the drive's health status out and see if there is something wrong with it: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

Thank you. But I have doubt if any recovery can secure all my data!

 

[Modabber]

have you ran it with the /r /f parameters?

I have tried /x, /f and /r, but the result was the same.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Why would you doubt that? Have you tried using some tools?

Check these threads on partition recovery:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/262280-32-partition-recovery
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1652779/recover-data-formatted-partition.html

Keep in mind that your safest bet for recovering the data, of course, would be to contact a professional data recovery company.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD