Is it possible? I have a 320GB external hard drive that went nuts after I accidentally nudged it in the middle of a file transfer which resulted to Windows not being able to access it anymore which in turn, is forcing me to format the disk which is out of the question since I have some precious files inside that drive. Now before you ask if I have a backup drive of my files, no because that drive that went nuts is actually my backup drive. Now I can still see the files intact using some data recovery software and I'm pretty sure I can still recover them but the problem is, I don't have an extra hard drive big enough to contain all of the recovered data. So I was wondering if there is somehow a way for me to recover the files and restore it to the same hard drive without having to copy the data to another drive.
The only thing that I cam come up with is trying to access it with a Unix system. They can sometimes see drives that Windows can't. Try googling around for maybe a disc recovery (live) distribution of Linux. Other than that, you'll have tio get a drive somewhere, I'm afraid.
You can't recover data to the same drive. I'd suggest recovering only the data you need at that time you need it. That would save you the need to buy more storage. Of course recovering data does take time especially on a drive that large. I don't know if Easus is free but you can look around the site [link below] and find out for yourself. If it's not then I'm sure you can find some free software that will help you recover your data. Log In
The OS is probably corrupted. If you're running Windows, put the OS CD in the disk drive and run it as you boot. Boot from the cd. Do a system repair of Windows.
Oh yeah, sorry. Skipped over that fact somehow. If OP is just interested in extracting files from the External Hard Drive, use PhotoRecLog In It's free and that what I use to retrieve deleted files on my drives. Maybe it'll work.
Well that still doesn't help, since OP said that they can't find enough free space to restore the data to, haha. But yeah, I think that has to be the only option too, unless there's a way to fix the FAT of the drive.
Oh I'm sorry I missed that again. My reading comprehension has been on the fritz as of late. As for OP, it's not going to become simple if you don't have a drive to put your files on, temporarily. It would be something like trying to carry two buckets of water while having only one bucket, because the other one broke. Not very helpful, I know. Is there a way to restore the integrity of a broken FAT? I don't know. I'll have to look around...
Hah, happens. And yeah, I'm not sure. There should be a way to get the drive readable without formatting it, but I have no diea if there is a way to make it readable forever..
Thanks for the suggestions guys but after spending a lot of time trying to restore the drive and Googling the hell out of every possible solution, I just went ahead and bought a new drive and just backed up everything from scratch. Took me 12 hours to get all my files back not to mention almost 50% of them got corrupted.
