HDD access denied due to 'Parameter is incorrect' (Win10 Pro - 21H2)

mecmec · 08 Mar 2023

Hi guys,
Long story short: My valuable backup data HDD has become inaccessible. At first the drive was described as 'Raw' in Disk Manager, but by running AOMEI Partition Assistant (chkdsk) it is now NTFS, but still inaccessible. I have also tried native CHKDSK with F + R switch, but that did not change anything. Does it make sense to try again with X switch? I am not sure if this could worsen things? See attachments for details on this issue.

Samuria · 08 Mar 2023

Welcome to the forum. When it goes raw it means its lost the parition table when thats restored all th files will be there. It depends what you restore has done but you should try FREE parition recover software and see if it find the orginal partion

mecmec · 09 Mar 2023

Samuria said:

Welcome to the forum. When it goes raw it means its lost the parition table when thats restored all th files will be there. It depends what you restore has done but you should try FREE parition recover software and see if it find the orginal partion

Thanks! Please notice: it's no longer in 'raw' state. Is it a bad idea to run 'CHKDSK J: /X' ? If so, why? I was not able to run Recuva app, because I could not access the corrupt drive.

Paul Black · 09 Mar 2023

Hello @mecmec,
Welcome to TenForums.

mecmec said:

Thanks! Please notice: it's no longer in 'raw' state. Is it a bad idea to run 'CHKDSK J: /X' ? If so, why? I was not able to run Recuva app, because I could not access the corrupt drive.

Do NOT do anything. @jumanji might be able to give you excellent advice about this. He will see this post as I have mentioned him.

mecmec · 09 Mar 2023

I have thought about trying the Partition Recovery Wizard on AOMEI Partition Assistant, but I wanted to play it safe, so that is why I have consulted you guys.

jumanji · 09 Mar 2023

Paul Black said:

Hello @mecmec,
Welcome to TenForums.

Do NOT do anything. @jumanji might be able to give you excellent advice about this. He will see this post as I have mentioned him.

Hi @mecmec,

You have come in at a wrong time - a wrong time for jumanji

. Had had laser cataract surgery on 2nd and 4th March on both eyes and recuperating with eye drops prescribed every three hours. Though my distant vision is alright ( I see everything bright now) I would need glasses for near vision which the eye hospital will prescribe on the next followup around 20th March.

Though I can see the monitor - which is bright as never before - I can't view for more than 10 minutes- My eyes will literally start crying. So I will be going slow on this thread.

There is absolutely no need for running Partition Recovery since the drive has a drive letter.

Is it worth running checkdisk with repair option? May be but before running check disk I would like to make sure that the MFT and MFT mirror in the disk is OK.

Time for the eye drops. Expect my next post in another four hours.

In the meantime, Is J: an external HDD?

mecmec · 09 Mar 2023

jumanji said:

Hi @mecmec,

In the meantime, Is J: an external HDD?

Yes, it's an external HDD (i.e. internal disk in a docking station). Hard time for your eyes - wish you best of luck. Looking forward to hearing from you again. BTW, pretty amazing that you are still going strong on IT given your high age! At 67 y.o. I am merely a youngster.

jumanji · 09 Mar 2023

@mecmec

Dock: Manufacturer ? Model ?

Safely remove the dock, pull out any other HDD in the dock. Retain only the 1TB faulty HDD, switch on the dock.

Also safely remove any other external HDD/s, storage devices plugged into USB ports.

Post a screenshot of Windows Disk Management.

Right click on the Start button > Disk Management > View > Top > click on Disk List. This will show the partition type of the connected disks as below.

HDD access denied due to 'Parameter is incorrect' (Win10 Pro - 21H2)-05-02-2022-20-37-58.jpg

mecmec · 09 Mar 2023

@jumanji

This is my dock: ADSA-ST SuperSpeed USB dual HDD dock | Axagon

Screen shot of disk management:

- - - Updated - - -
@jumanji

Another screen shot of disk management:

jumanji · 09 Mar 2023

@mecmec

I have no idea about the Axagon Dock. So I will leave it at that. I assume that it is working fine and should not have been a cause for turning your Disk RAW.

CheckDisk run by AOMEI Partition Assistant seems to have fixed the errors and has turned your disk format to NTFS. I am not able to decipher what command it ran and what errors it fixed. I can only decipher that it found no bad sectors and the disk is in good health and data is there..

Disk Management shows that the disk is an MBR disk and it has some 300GB of data leaving 66% free.

As a general proposition I do not advise running checkdisk if the disk is RAW and has a drive letter, without ascertaining the health of the Master File Table. If the Master file table is corrupt running checkDisk has the potential of deleting all files not properly indexed in MFT. In this case nothing like that has happened and the disk seems to have all data (approx. 300GB)

So we will go ahead using TestDisk which is my standard protocol.

Just read these two threads.

Lost partition on an external drive from post #14 onwards.

(File System Corruption) External SSD, NTFS, RAW from post #5 onwards

We will be proceeding on the lines indicated in those threads. But don't jump and start using TestDisk on your own. Wait for specific step by step instructions which will be given in my next post I shall try to write after dinner. My time now is 21:00

For the time being you can just download TestDisk and keep it ready.

Download the latest stable version 7.1 from Partition Recovery and File Undelete

Extract the testdisk-7.1.win.zip to the root of your system drive C:. You will run testdisk_win.exe in the extracted testdisk-7.1 folder. TestDisk should be run with administrator privileges - Run as administrator (create a shortcut on your desktop).