External HDD is corrupted and unreadable

jumanji said:

There can be any number of reasons why access is denied and accordingly there can be a number of solutions.

Generally what happens is OPs try things on their own reading the internet solutions. If they are lucky their problem is resolved on the first try.

But most end up further complicating the problem. So we go by te general dictum, recover the data first and then do whatever you want or try, whatever solutions you want to try.

Your case itself is a good example. You never said what exactly was your problem in the first instance, What exactly was the error message you got first that prompted you to look for a solution?.

And the first solution you tried. Did it work? It didn't. You merely got into another problem and a different error message. And you also did not give the exact error message. Just Access denied was not the error message. There definitely was more in that message. You must always reproduce the complete error message verbatim, better if you post a screenshot of it. Whenever you get any error message, just don't panic. Take a snapshot and keep it. You may not always recollect the exact error message when you seek help.

When OPs do not give the complete information, they will only get generalised solutions. We do not have that magic crystal ball to tell us what exactly is the cause for that incomplete error message "Access denied". :)

In any case, you have definitely learnt more than what you already knew - using live Linux to recover data from an inaccessible boot drive or any external drive, that will keep you in good stead in future. Thank Ten Forums for that.

Hey relax. I really appreciate your help on this one. I'm also glad that I now have a backup drive so like I said no worries! By the way did you check out the YouTube link? It was the fix for my problem. I also deleted the recycle bin on both "C" and "I" (my expansion drive) so hopefully I fixed a reoccurrence of the problem. As for questioning running chkdsk I think this is the normal way of starting troubleshooting this kind of issue. Thanks again jumanjI
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I did check it and since it worked for you that should be good. Generally only few of the youtube videos done by knowledgeable folks are good.

jumanji said:

I did check it and since it worked for you that should be good. Generally only few of the youtube videos done by knowledgeable folks are good.

Yeah,I've only tried two of them. One was a workaround to be able to watch BBC from Canada and that one also worked so I've been lucky that way.
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