Windows 10: External Drives Corrupted By Windows 10

I am a Windows 10 Currently V1909 18363.778 who has used external hard drives for backup for a number of years. I have never had a drive problem in over 10 years, and tend to phase out old drives to avoid issues. In the last two days I have had 2 drives become unreadable after I have plugged into my computer, one in a bizarre way. Here is the sequence of events.


I have 2 4tb Maxtor USB external drives to back up files, called BackUp and BackUp2, both 70% full, i always eject, check the light etc and look after these HD's - all good so far.

A few days ago I believe I put my computer into hibernation with BackUp HD attached, with the power off and the drive light inactive I pulled out BackUp. The next day without thinking I plugged in BackUp2 and turned on my computer. When I tried to access BackUp2 it was marked as not accessible.

After googling and consulting various forums, I managed to get chkdsk to be able to work, and it spent many hours finding multiple problems and errors. Once this had finished the disk was still inaccessible, so more Googling got me to change back folder permissions. Finally I could access the drive through explorer, and I noticed that the name of the HD had been changed to BackUp!!!!

The weird thing was that even though the drive was marked as 70% full only a few folders and files where visible, and they were files and folders that only previously existed on the other HD "BackUp" !!! and the file size was always marked as 0kB.


Does anyone have any idea how this could have happened. It feels like something treated the two HD's as the same and was trying to "restore" BackUp2 to be BackUp. I haven't got file history turned on, the only other possibility is that I used Disk Drill recently after my son plugged a HD into his phone wiping it instantly - I checked that I had not turned on any of it's backup & restore function but saw that the Disk Drill service kept running after closing the program down.


Finally, during the hours that chkdsk was running I had to use a 1tb Samsung drive which has some older files on. I had used it the previous day with no issues, and have never had a problem before. When I plugged it in, it did not appear on explorer, fearing another problem i ejected it. When I tried it on another computer it was completely unreadable, and as of now I haven't been able to get anything to be able to access it.


Any help, thoughts, advice, would be greatly appreciated.

:)

 

CANNOT DELETE A CORRUPTED FILE ON MY EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE ON WINDOWS 10

Hi Leenus,

Hard drive and other external memory storage can be corrupted on account of bad sectors which are no longer accessible or writable due to permanent damage. Your device or hard drive could also be infected by some type of malware. These are some of the possible
causes why you are experiencing the error "ERROR 0x80070570: The file or directory is corrupted or unreadable". To address this concern, we suggest performing the following troubleshooting methods:

Method 1

Check and repair disk errors or corrupted file system. This process can fix "The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable" error caused by bad sectors, virus infection or file system corruption. To do so, follow these steps:

• Back up all of the files on the hard drive (except for the corrupted file).
• Using Search, type CMD.
• From the search results, right-click on Command Prompt and then choose Run as administrator.
• On the Command Prompt window, type chkdsk /f h: (h stands for your hard drive) and then hit the Enter key.
• Delete the corrupted file and check if you'll experience the same error.

Method 2

Format the hard drive. You can manually format the hard drive to permanently remove "The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable" error. These are the steps on how to format an external drive:

• Plug the hard drive into your computer.
• Back up all of the files on the hard drive (except for the corrupted file).
• Open File Explorer and then click This PC.
• Click the external hard drive's name, click on Manage tab and then click on Format.
  
• Click Start and then click OK.

Keep us updated with the result.

 

External drive

Hi Richard,

There are several factors that can cause your external drive to not read DVDs even though the system is recognizing the device. This could be caused by a driver that needs to updated or corrupted files. For us to resolve your concern, kindly answer the questions
below:

• Just to confirm, the device that is not working properly is a external DVD optical drive?
• Were there any recent changes or updates installed on your computer?
• Have you tried to plug the external drive to a different port on your computer?

As a initial recommendation, we suggest that your run the built in troubleshooter in Windows 10. Kindly refer to the steps below:

• Type “Troubleshooting” in the Search bar and press Enter.
• Click on “View All” in the top left corner.
• This will display the list of troubleshooters which are built-in in the computer. You can click on
  Hardware and Devices from the list and you can run the troubleshooter.

This will check for common errors that affect hardware on your computer and attempts to correct them.

We look forward to your response after completing the steps.

 

CANNOT DELETE A CORRUPTED FILE ON MY EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE ON WINDOWS 10

I had the very same problem and this worked perfectly!!!