Windows 10: USB hard drive is not accessible

I just tried to access my external usb hard drive and was unable to do so. Received error message: "E:\ is not accessible - the disk structure is corrupted and unreadable". I just updated all my drivers 2 days ago so I tried plugging the drive into my laptop which has the older drivers. Laptop gave same error message. I attached the drive back to my desktop (Dell OptiPlex 5050 Windows 10 Pro) and ran "disk manager". Disk manager saw the E drive but said it was "raw and 100% free" even though it should be formatted with about 100 gb on it. Is there any way to salvage the drive or is it dead? Thanks for your help.

:)

 

Accessing a Hard Drive...

...from a dead laptop.

My girlfriend's laptop recently s**t the bed, and she has a lot of photos she would like to retrieve from it. I used a USB to IDE cable to try, but it's a no go. Her drive has Windows XP Home on it, and my system has Win7 x64. The computer recognizes the drive, but it wants me to initialize it, which I think may format it.

I don't know if it's formatted FAT32 or NTFS. Are there any suggestions on accessing the drive to pull all this data off of it?

 

External hard drive not recognised

Thanks for this. I've done what you suggested and been through all the steps mentioned in the article. The hard drive works fine on a Mac computer, and I've managed to copy the information on it. It must be a Surface issue so I'll try to get a chat line tomorrow.

 

Hard Drive not Showing

Hi Lori,

Thank you for posting back.

• How are you connecting the Hard drive to your computer?
• Have you tried connecting the hard drive to a different computer and check if it works?

It's possible that your USB drivers are corrupt. I suggest you to try the following steps and check.

• Press Windows Key +R and type
  devmgmt.msc to open Device manager.
• Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers
  at the left bottom.
• Right-click the first USB controller under Universal Serial Bus controllers, and then click on
  Uninstall to remove it.
• Repeat these steps for the entire USB controller under Universal Serial Bus controllers.
• Restart the computer. After the computer starts, Windows will automatically scan for hardware changes and reinstall all the USB controllers that you uninstalled.

Keep us posted with the status of the issue to assist you further.

Thank you.