Windows 10: Hard drive is corrupted and unreadable what to do? Please Help!

mrje1 said:

Hello everyone,
I did a search of the forums and didn't get the answer I was looking for. I have two external hard drives. Not sure how this happened, but When I try to access both external hard drives on drive letters E: and F: it gives me an access is denied. the F: drive gives me an additional message that states: The parameter is incorrect. I also got a message before that it was corrupted and unreadable. I don't remember where that message popped up though.
What would be the proper procedure to get my hard drive working and recover my files? I don't want to lose my files. My whole life is on there. Any other information you guys need please ask and I will do my best to answer.
Thank you very much for all your help. Crossing all my fingers that i can get this resolved.

First, kind of obvious but I have to ask, have you done a shutdown and power on boot?

Have those external drives ever worked on Win10? Or first time connected to your Win10 PC?

The upper external drive does not have a drive letter assigned. Can you assign a drive letter to it?

From your post, I assume that you don't have backups of both external drives. If so, before you try anything, are you able to make backups of both external drives? Maybe on a different PC running Win7 or Win8. I would do that first before trying anything else since your whole life is on those drives. If you don't have a third empty drive to back up to, suggest buying one and backing up to it using the "imaging" method of backup. (not clone method). With the imaging method, you can put multiple backups on one backup drive.

Regarding the drive that had the corruption error. Is it in a USB enclosure or a bare drive plugged into a docking station?

mrje1 said:

Not sure how this happened...

Maybe you just got the Anniversary Update? That has occasionally been reported to not see some drives. For example...

I updated my Windows 10 using media creation tools, after ~3hrs the update completed, but I had a problem. The OS couldnt access my external hdd. Because of that I decided to rollback, my hdd worked again.

Windows 10 Anniversary update problems, not recognizing external hdd

Try the drives on another PC, I'd expect them to seen correctly there.

I would create a bootable USB flash drive or DVD of Kyhi's recovery drive:
Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk - Windows 10 Forums

See if the drives are readable when you boot the computer from it. Definitely a backup solution large enough to make backups onto is a must have! If the drives are readable in Kyhi's recovery drive, you can use the Macrium Reflect program included on his drive to make backup images of the hard drives. Then you can troubleshoot further by reformatting the hard drives without the "quick" to do a surface check of the drives while formatting. If you have bad sectors, I would recommend replacing the installed hard drives.

If the full long format of the drives comes back OK, then you can restore your backup images to the installed drive and chalk it up to the infamous Anniversary update glitch. I think that what happened with that is that something in the Anniversary update is not compatible with certain parameters used when partitioning some drives and simply backing up the drives with bootable software that is compatible, reformatting the drives, and restoring the backup images fixes it.

mck said:

First, kind of obvious but I have to ask, have you done a shutdown and power on boot?

Have those external drives ever worked on Win10? Or first time connected to your Win10 PC?

The upper external drive does not have a drive letter assigned. Can you assign a drive letter to it?

From your post, I assume that you don't have backups of both external drives. If so, before you try anything, are you able to make backups of both external drives? Maybe on a different PC running Win7 or Win8. I would do that first before trying anything else since your whole life is on those drives. If you don't have a third empty drive to back up to, suggest buying one and backing up to it using the "imaging" method of backup. (not clone method). With the imaging method, you can put multiple backups on one backup drive.

Regarding the drive that had the corruption error. Is it in a USB enclosure or a bare drive plugged into a docking station?

Hi mck,

Thank you so much for your response.

First, kind of obvious but I have to ask, have you done a shutdown and power on boot?

Yes, I did!!! I actually, rebooted my whole computer with a clean install, but still no luck.

Have those external drives ever worked on Win10? Or first time connected to your Win10 PC?

Yes, I have been using these drives since December of 2013. No, not first time use.

The upper external drive does not have a drive letter assigned. Can you assign a drive letter to it?

Here is the weird thing, I just checked again and now it is showing the name I gave it and the drive letter E: It is also saying now it is a Healthy Partition.

From your post, I assume that you don't have backups of both external drives. If so, before you try anything, are you able to make backups of both external drives? Maybe on a different PC running Win7 or Win8. I would do that first before trying anything else since your whole life is on those drives. If you don't have a third empty drive to back up to, suggest buying one and backing up to it using the "imaging" method of backup. (not clone method). With the imaging method, you can put multiple backups on one backup drive.

The funny or sad thing is I did have backups and those external drives I mentioned are the backups and the ones messed up. How crazy is that!!!!! So, yes, I was able to make backups before.

Unfortunately, I do not have another computer to test the hard drives on. The interesting thing is I never did the imaging method ever. I think I might give this a try this time. Can you point me to information so I can start learning this?

Regarding the drive that had the corruption error. Is it in a USB enclosure or a bare drive plugged into a docking station?

I will explain further here. I believe both drives are in the same boat, but not sure. I do know that the E: drive is recognizing the name I gave it before, but the F: drive is not. It has become a raw drive for some strange reason.


I am very appreciated of your time and help. If you have anything else please don't hesitate to do so.

Bree said:

Maybe you just got the Anniversary Update? That has occasionally been reported to not see some drives. For example...
Windows 10 Anniversary update problems, not recognizing external hdd

Try the drives on another PC, I'd expect them to seen correctly there.

Hi Bree,

Thank you so much for your time and assistance. I am not sure if it is or not. What is the version number of that update? Also, my drives are visible they are just corrupted etc. and cannot access.

Unfortunately, don't have another PC.

Superfly said:

... if it's just the filesytem that's corrupted (not the disk itself).. try chkdsk with /f and /r switches.

Hi Superfly,

Thank you so much for your time and assistance. I actually started to do this and it said Deleting orphan file record segment and it was deleting tons of them. I got concerned. I did some research and found out that if you do this you will lose your files. I did not want to take any chances.

NavyLCDR said:

I would create a bootable USB flash drive or DVD of Kyhi's recovery drive:
Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk - Windows 10 Forums

See if the drives are readable when you boot the computer from it. Definitely a backup solution large enough to make backups onto is a must have! If the drives are readable in Kyhi's recovery drive, you can use the Macrium Reflect program included on his drive to make backup images of the hard drives. Then you can troubleshoot further by reformatting the hard drives without the "quick" to do a surface check of the drives while formatting. If you have bad sectors, I would recommend replacing the installed hard drives.

If the full long format of the drives comes back OK, then you can restore your backup images to the installed drive and chalk it up to the infamous Anniversary update glitch. I think that what happened with that is that something in the Anniversary update is not compatible with certain parameters used when partitioning some drives and simply backing up the drives with bootable software that is compatible, reformatting the drives, and restoring the backup images fixes it.

Hi NavyLCDR,

Thank you so much for your time and assistance.

How do I know if I have downloaded or updated to this anniversary addition? I will have to look further into your advice and I will comment more a bit later as I understand further. It will be a day or so.

I am trying this right now, I downloaded EaseUS Data Recovery (What do you think of this program?) and I am doing a deep scan of the F: drive and it is finding the files. it says it will be another 4 hours until complete. Once complete then I am going to transfer it to another hard drive. Then I am going to reformat the F: and transfer those file back on to it. What do you think of me doing this so far? Once I do this then I can make that recovery drive you recommended. If I am understanding correctly.

mrje1 said:

I am not sure if it is or not. What is the version number of that update? Also, my drives are visible they are just corrupted etc. and cannot access.

Run Winver. If you are on the Anniversary Update it will say version 1607 build 14393.351 (the last 3 digits may be lower in you don't have the latest updates). If you were updated in the last 10 days the option to go back to the earlier build is in: Settings > Update & Security > Recovery