External HDD is corrupted and unreadable

trembuzz said:

Should I be creating a Fat32 or NTFS

Do not bother about formatting. Rufus will format the pen drive during the process. ( of course Rufus will tell you that you will lose all data when it formats the pendrive. So backup any data on the pendrive before you start Rufus. In other words it should be an empty pen drive without any data)
You can use any Linux distro to make the live Linux pen drive but with Lucid Puppy you have this my guide here to navigate through the unknown territory. Lucid Puppy way to recover files from a non-bootable computer - Windows 7 Help Forums

I used the universal installer app to make the bootable usb pendrive as rufus looked a bit more involved. Nothing appears in the drop downs in rufus and didn't know how to use the program. Do I need rufus as well?
t

While it does not matter which way you created the bootable pendrive, I had later chosen Rufus as it is the easiest. You are missing something if you are unable to use Rufus.

One important point is you must plug in the pendrive and then run Rufus. Your device (pendrive) should be listed in the Device field. Rest as per the screenshot in my post #8 here Is there any way of saving a completely unrecognisable hard drive? Solved - Windows 7 Help Forums Make sure that you remove all other pendrives /external HDDs so that you do not format a wrong device.

If you are unable to use Rufus, post the screenshot and I shall tell you where you are going wrong.

And @bro67, just to confirm how easy and less involved it is to create a bootable Live Linux pen drive with Win32 Disk Imager as suggested by you, I downloaded it from SourceForge.

It would not recognise the lupu-528.005.iso. (asking for only *.img., and *. IMG), When forced to take the .iso file by *.* , it wrote something to the pen drive but it was not bootable. The pendrive has some unrecognisable file system and needs to be formatted. Can you please guide me how to create a bootable pendrive with that iso using Win32 Disk Imager? Even the OP will require that if he has to follow your suggestion.

I've already created the pen drive. I was missing putting the empty drive in! (duh)
Anyway, if lucid puppy is doing the grunt work all is ready to go except the hardware which should arrive early next week.
Thanks again for your help. I will post again with my results.
t

Never mind. We all overlook certain things and learn from our mistakes.. I guessed that you wouldn't have plugged in your pen drive. :).

Now till you get your new drive, you can experiment with Lucid Puppy. Check whether you are able to boot from it and see the existing drives. You can also connect other working external drives/Flash drives and get to know how those are presented in Linux. You can try mounting and unmounting the drives , copy the files from one drive to another etc., Just make sure you do not delete the files . Do not move the files . Only copy.

jumanji said:

Never mind. We all overlook certain things and learn from our mistakes.. I guessed that you wouldn't have plugged in your pen drive. :).

Now till you get your new drive, you can experiment with Lucid Puppy. Check whether you are able to boot from it and see the existing drives. You can also connect other working external drives/Flash drives and get to know how those are presented in Linux. You can try mounting and unmounting the drives , copy the files from one drive to another etc., Just make sure you do not delete the files . Do not move the files . Only copy.

Yeah was going to do a few dry runs just for those reasons. Great minds think alike? Fools seldom differ. lol
t

Files are copying as I write this. It'll be a long process as there are over two and a half tb's of data and of course lucid puppy doesn't support usb 3. So how is it that windows couldn't access the files but Linux can? I did notice that the recycle bin was reported as corrupt when I tried to open the drive in windows. Could this have been the root of the problem and could a corrupt recycle bin render a complete drive inaccessible?
t