Hard drive is corrupted and unreadable what to do? Please Help!

NavyLCDR said:

You only need a storage location large enough to hold the 1 GB or so ISO file of Kyhi's recovery drive. Then you get yourself a 2 GB or larger USB flash drive. Make it bootable:

Create a Bootable USB Flash Drive

At step 9 make sure to format it as FAT32:
9. To format the partition, type format fs=fat32 quick, and then click ENTER.

For step 12, you will mount the ISO file of Kyki's recovery drive and copy all the files and folders from the mounted ISO file to the USB flash drive, then boot the computer from the USB flash drive (you will have to enter your UEFI/BIOS settings and find the boot override options to boot from the USB flash drive).

I always do the big updates like the Anniversary update by downloading the ISO file and manually updating the 12 computers in my house.

Read my quote in the opening post of Kyhi's recovery drive thread and you can make yourself a bootable USB flash drive that will boot into Kyhi's recovery drive and that you can install and/or upgrade to the Anniversary update from:
Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk - Windows 10 Forums

Hi NavyLCDR...I ended up finding a 4gb flash drive laying around. I checked it and it says it is a fat32. Looks like I am good to go on that.

I have a few questions here. The download from Kyhi's thread is Win10586PESE_x64 ISO v160707. First, what does the PESE mean in the file name? Secondly before I mount the ISO file I want to make sure I should use this one. Is this version: 160707 the anniversery Edition? If so, from what I got from people here is not to use it. Kyhi does have another on listed: v160125 should I use that one? Also, I do have an Windows 10 installation disk that I created on DVD the 1511 version, should I use that?

Then I should be good to go and try your advice. Thank you again.

mrje1 said:

Hi NavyLCDR...I ended up finding a 4gb flash drive laying around. I checked it and it says it is a fat32. Looks like I am good to go on that.

I have a few questions here. The download from Kyhi's thread is Win10586PESE_x64 ISO v160707. First, what does the PESE mean in the file name? Secondly before I mount the ISO file I want to make sure I should use this one. Is this version: 160707 the anniversery Edition? If so, from what I got from people here is not to use it. Kyhi does have another on listed: v160125 should I use that one? Also, I do have an Windows 10 installation disk that I created on DVD the 1511 version, should I use that?

Then I should be good to go and try your advice. Thank you again.

First, a point of clarification, I don't (and you can't) use Kyhi's Recovery Drive to upgrade an existing Windows 10 to the next version (like Anniversary Update). You can only do a clean install using Kyhi's Recovery Drive and the Windows 10 ISO file.

I'm not sure what the letters PESE stand for exactly but it means it is a very minimal Windows OS that loads completely into memory and has just enough functionality to run a few basic tasks.

There's nothing major wrong with the Anniversary update now. The cumulative updates have fixed almost all of the issues.

Stick with the latest version of Kyhi's recovery drive which is 160707.

You cannot use the Windows 10 version 1511 installation disk to upgrade to Anniversary Update because the Anniversary Update is version 1607. You'll have to download a new Windows 10 ISO file and make a DVD/USB flash drive from it.

One more thing NavyLCDR about Macrium Reflect Free. I did some research and some people had some problems with it.

Here are some of the comments and would love to get your thoughts.

One user said that: Requires upgrade to pay version to back up files and folders. Once I do this will I be able to restore without upgrading to full version?

Others have said that they have problems booting up with the new hard drive. Not sure if it was something they did, but have you had any problems with this software? should I have any concerns? Should I try windows built in image maker?

Thank you again!

If it were me, and the files are that important - I would be taking those hard drives to a data recovery specialist. The more you mess with them, the less likely you are going to recover any data from them.

mrje1 said:

One more thing NavyLCDR about Macrium Reflect Free. I did some research and some people had some problems with it.

... snip ...

should I have any concerns? Should I try windows built in image maker?

Here's an alternative (that I've used for years). There is a backup program called "Image for Windows (IFW)". It comes with additional programs called "Image for DOS" (IFD), "Image for Linux" (IFL) and "TBI VIEW". Normally, IFW is used to make backups while running Windows. But backups can also be made by booting into IFL and not using Windows at all.

IFD and IFL are burned to a CD and are bootable operating systems. I like IFL so I'll discuss it. Do a power on boot into IFL and it will run Linux instead of Windows. Use IFL to make image backups of your two hard drives. You are not using Windows at all to make the backups. You don't have to know how to use Linux to make the backups. IFL is a backup and restore program and it just uses Linux to make or restore backups.

After making a backup, disconnect your original hard drives, then boot into Windows and run "TBI VIEW". It can open a backup file from the backup drive and access the folders and files in it as if they were on the original hard drive. Can copy folders and or files from the backup to a hard drive.

Using this approach, you would not be jeopardizing any data on your hard drives. It can give you an opportunity to see what data is OK in the backups. The IFW bundle can be found at:

TeraByte Unlimited :: Boot Manager :: Partition Manager :: Drive Image :: Disk Copy :: Drive Wipe :: Hard Drive Utilities

I believe that one can test the software before buying but ask on the terabyteunlimited website for verification.

NavyLCDR said:

If it were me, and the files are that important - I would be taking those hard drives to a data recovery specialist. The more you mess with them, the less likely you are going to recover any data from them.

Thank you NavyLCDR. I did recover my files (Not sure if it found all, but will see as I sort through) using easeUS Data Recovery software. That data was recovered on one of my older external hard drives that I had the past 3 years. It has 2tb. That hard drive I was thinking of using to store the backup of the image. With that said, even though I recovered that data with the software, this software didn't put all my files into into the same directory structure that I originally setup which is going to require quite a bit of time to reorganize this. Because I did your advice on booting from the Kyhi drive and I was able to view my data on the corrupted & unreadable external hard drive with the same structure intact and by doing that image of that drive could save me tedious work of reorganizing my files. So, if I did a backup of the image on that same drive with all my recovered data will I lose that data if I do so? The recovered data is about 1tb, do you think I would have enough space for that image as well? In other terms, is it recommended by yourself or by most of the professional community to make a system or disk image on a brand new-clean hard drive or is it ok to make a system or disk image on the same hard drive my recovered data is on?

Would love to get your intake on this, when viewing the corrupted or unreadable drive by booting from the Kyhi drive I was able to view the most of the files, but I went to one of my directories, but I came across an error that stated: The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable. So, looks like some of my directories are having that problem. Is there a way to fix that or am I pretty much out of luck with that directory?

mck said:

Here's an alternative (that I've used for years). There is a backup program called "Image for Windows (IFW)". It comes with additional programs called "Image for DOS" (IFD), "Image for Linux" (IFL) and "TBI VIEW". Normally, IFW is used to make backups while running Windows. But backups can also be made by booting into IFL and not using Windows at all.

IFD and IFL are burned to a CD and are bootable operating systems. I like IFL so I'll discuss it. Do a power on boot into IFL and it will run Linux instead of Windows. Use IFL to make image backups of your two hard drives. You are not using Windows at all to make the backups. You don't have to know how to use Linux to make the backups. IFL is a backup and restore program and it just uses Linux to make or restore backups.

After making a backup, disconnect your original hard drives, then boot into Windows and run "TBI VIEW". It can open a backup file from the backup drive and access the folders and files in it as if they were on the original hard drive. Can copy folders and or files from the backup to a hard drive.

Using this approach, you would not be jeopardizing any data on your hard drives. It can give you an opportunity to see what data is OK in the backups. The IFW bundle can be found at:

TeraByte Unlimited :: Boot Manager :: Partition Manager :: Drive Image :: Disk Copy :: Drive Wipe :: Hard Drive Utilities

I believe that one can test the software before buying but ask on the terabyteunlimited website for verification.

Thank you mck. That is something I will look into. I appreciate all your information and your contribution to this thread!

mrje1 said:

In other terms, is it recommended by yourself or by most of the professional community to make a system or disk image on a brand new-clean hard drive or is it ok to make a system or disk image on the same hard drive my recovered data is on?

Would love to get your intake on this, when viewing the corrupted or unreadable drive by booting from the Kyhi drive I was able to view the most of the files, but I went to one of my directories, but I came across an error that stated: The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable. So, looks like some of my directories are having that problem. Is there a way to fix that or am I pretty much out of luck with that directory?

You need to save the image onto a different hard drive.

Hello Everyone,

Update here. I tried the chkdsk /r e: and it took about a day to complete. The chkdsk came up with 0 bad sectors. I will have the image of results below. When booting my computer from the Kyhi drive I created by the advice of NavyLCDR I was able to access the external hard drive and view folders that were unreadable before I did the chkdsk. So it fixed that, but however, I still cannot access the drive when I boot from the regular windows.

From what I was able to do on the Kyhi drive and the results from the ckdsk it seems that there is nothing wrong with the external hard drive, but I believe the culprit is the operating system, which probably needs a clean install and/or probably need to replace the internal USB ports that it is connected to.

With that said, do you guys concur with what I mentioned here? Any other thoughts on this? Do you guys think I should do another chkdsk, but use the chkdsk /f e:?

Thank you so much for your help

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