External Hard drive help

teajug

I have an external hard drive that has been working OK on my laptop sony vaio, recently it says that I should format the hard drive but I think that will delete all on it, whcih I do not want to any of the data.

When I tried to open the external hard drive it say that the parameter are incorrect. What does this mean and how can I correct it. Any help would be greatly appreciated. :T

Johnmcl7

Whatever you do, you must not let it format the drive as this will wipe the data and make it more difficult to recover. These error messages frequently mean either the drive itself is failing or the enclosure isn't working properly. Initially I'd try file recovery software (I find File Scavenger quite good) but if still getting nowhere then the next stage would be to buy another USB enclosure or a dock, get the drive out and plug it in to the new USB enclosure/dock and see if the drive is working any better.

John

closed

it could be corrupt/faulty, try it in another machine.

teajug

closed wrote: »

it could be corrupt/faulty, try it in another machine.

I do not have another machine therefore cannot check it out. Is there anyway to cure the parameter issue please. :T

Johnmcl7

As I said above, your data is corrupt or the enclosure is faulty so you need to try recovery software or get the drive into another USB enclosure. Do not try and fix the parameter issue directly or you'll likely lose your data.

John